Justin Timberlake’s ‘Suit & Tie’ Takes Off

14 Jan, 2013

At midnight this morning, Justin Timberlake released his long-awaited new single, “Suit & Tie,” featuring Jay-Z, on his website, with RCA Records simultaneously servicing the song to radio and the iTunes Store. The retro-soulful “Suit” previews Timberlake’s third album, “The 20/20 Experience,” due later this year.

In its first day at radio and retail, the song has rocketed to an extremely impressive start.

As of this posting, the song already ranks in the top five on the Pop Songs building airplay chart with approximately 1,000 plays, according to Nielsen BDS, aided heavily by top-of-the-hour spins on a majority of CBS- and Clear Channel Media and Entertainment-owned reporters, while Cumulus Media stations have also quickly added the song to rotation. (The BDS tracking week for the Pop Songs chart runs from Monday through Sunday, so “Suit & Tie” will benefit from a full week of airplay when the tally is compiled next Monday [Jan. 21] morning.)

Predictably, “Suit” is also selling swiftly and could earn Timberlake his best sales week ever for a digital song. The track is currently atop the best-sellers list in the iTunes Store, where it’s exclusively available as a retail single.Also helped by promotional play on Clear Channel rhythmic, R&B/hip-hop and adult pop stations, “Suit” is already trending in the top 10 on the Rhythmic building chart and the top 15 of the Mainstream R&B/hip-hop and Adult Pop Songs building tallies.

Based on early data from label sources, Billboard forecasts that “Suit” may sell at least 400,000 downloads by the end of the tracking week on Sunday, Jan. 20. That projection, however, could easily change tomorrow morning, once we have the song’s first full-day’s worth of sales to examine.

If “Suit” shifts more than 400,000, it would be the biggest debut for a digital song since Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” moved 416,000 on the Digital Songs chart dated Oct. 27, 2012, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Timberlake’s previous best week came courtesy of “SexyBack,” which bowed with 250,000 on the Sept. 9, 2006, chart, in the fairly early years of digital music sales. That number seems small in comparison to today’s top figures, when hit songs regularly sell 300,000 or more. Put in perspective, the opening for “SexyBack” was, at that point, the biggest start ever until Rihanna’s “Umbrella” opened with 277,000 the week of June 9, 2007.

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