Per Nielsen Music’s annual report, The Weeknd’s “Beauty Behind The Madness” was 2015’s #5 overall album. It generated 2.045 million total US consumption units.
862,000 of those units are pure sales, while 615,600 are owed to Track Equivalent Albums (6.156 million track sales/10).
The balance comes from Streaming Equivalent Albums (track streams/1500). “Beauty Behind The Madness” generated a whopping 849.813 million on-demand audio song streams in 2015 (566,542 SEA units).
Even though SEA makes up the smallest percentage of the album’s total consumption units, it is the most impressive of the three figures from a comparative context.
In a comparison against the year’s Top 10 overall albums, “Beauty” ranks eighth for pure sales, fourth for track sales, but first for track streams.
In terms of streaming, its closest competitors among the year’s ten biggest albums are Drake’s “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” (749.380 million streams) and Justin Bieber’s “Purpose” (732.357 million streams).