Details at this link.
However, I never gave it much thought. I plan to hit Waterloo Records this weekend, maybe a staffer can answer this question.
The theory about Billboard‘s charts had some validity initially but then again, I remembered how the retailers used to fudge the sales numbers up through the early Nineties. Then soundscan cut the stores out of the equation, revealing to the world that people were buying more Rap and Garth Brooks than originally reported.
Personally, I will go with the same explanation for some restaurants being closed on Monday. Tuesday is a better starting day and stuff can be restocked during the slowness of Mondays. After books, music is the first modern product with new material on a weekly basis, it’s not a wonder videotapes, DVDs and videogames have followed suit.
I didn’t know new albums were released on Tuesdays until 1988. During that Summer, I made sure I rushed down to Radio Doctors in Milwaukee to get Temple of Low Men by Crowded House on the first day it hit the shelves.