Seven compilations actually outsold this week's #2 album in Australia

Ed Sheeran's album Divide has spent 19 non-consecutive weeks at the top of the ARIA Albums chart, which is no surprise in a nation where Michael Buble's Christmas album has hit the top reaches of the chart every year since 2011.

What's more surprising, however, is that due to the delineation between compilation albums and regular albums in the ARIA charts, Sheeran wasn't actually the highest-selling album this past week.

According to figures obtained by Noise 11, So Fresh The Hits of Winter 2017 sold 3,700 more units in the past week than Divide, while six further compilations outsold the #2 album, Lorde's Melodrama.

Among those albums that outsold Lorde are the likes of Ray Hadley: Those Were The Days Vol 2, 101 Classic Hits, Triple J Hottest 100 Vol 24, So Fresh: The Hits of Summer 2017 + Best of 2016, Sing Your Heart Out 2017, and the future classic 35 Years of Waking Up With Today.

There are further questions, too. With the recent addition of streaming figures to the charts, it's more than likely that these compilation sales would chart even higher when adding these singles streams to these tallies. Of course, this wouldn't exactly be fair, especially when it comes to comps such as So Fresh that routinely scoop up the hits of the day - but we're past the point of fair.

Still, when things are broken, they are broken. As Noise 11 point out, it took Lorde less than 800 sales/equivalent streams to secure her #2 spot. That's slightly more than 100 sales a day, across the entire country.