Update: Billboard has made it official: Drake’s “Views” debuts at #1 on Top Album Sales and the Billboard 200.
It tops the former with what Billboard reports as 852K opening week US sales. It tops the latter with 1.04 million consumption units, a measure of the album’s pure sales + TEA (track sales/10) + SEA (track streams/1500).
The album’s SEA figure is a monstrous 163.4K, a product of the album’s record-setting 245 million opening week streams. That figure, which obliterates the previous record of 115 million (set by Beyonce’s “Lemonade” just last week), was generated primarily from Apple Music. All but a few songs were exclusive to the service.
The pure sales figure was entirely generated on Apple Music.
The aforementioned “Lemonade” slips to #2 on this week’s Billboard 200 consumption chart, with Prince’s “Purple Rain” (#3), Prince’s “The Very Best Of Prince” (#4), and Rihanna’s “ANTI” (#5) completing the Top 5.
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Drake’s “Views” predictably cruised to victory in the US album sales race, selling more than 850,000 copies despite exclusivity on Apple Music.
That same exclusivity also applied to streaming for most of the album’s tracks, but it did not prevent “Views” from obliterating the weekly US streaming record. “Views” also posted a solid weekly track sales figure despite the fact that only select singles were available for individual purchase.
According to Hits Daily Double, “Views” sold approximately 855,103 US copies during the April 29-May 5 tracking week. Billboard’s final data will differ slightly, but the disparity will not change the overall outcome: “Views” will be at the top of Top Album Sales.
With Track Equivalent Albums (track sales/10) and Streaming Equivalent Albums (track streams/1500) added to the pure sales total, “Views” generated what Hits estimated as 1,075,494 total consumption units. The monstrous total will easily slot “Views” at #1 on the Billboard 200 consumption chart.
SEA units made a particularly valuable contribution. Hits says the album generated in the neighborhood of 250-300 million US streams (166K-200K in SEA units) during the tracking week, destroying the previous record of 115 million streams set by Beyonce’s “Lemonade” last week.
As Headline Planet previously reported, “Views” had actually broken the streaming record by the end of its third day of release.
Notable is that while the album was very front-loaded from an album sales standpoint (roughly 85% of its weekly sales were generated in the first three days), its streaming activity held up very well throughout the week (streaming over the first three days amounted to only about half the full week’s activity).
Beyonce’s “Lemonade,” which won last week’s sales and consumption races, takes #2 this week. It generated about 195,636 in weekly US sales and 322,299 total weekly units.
Other top performers from a pure sales standpoint: Prince’s “Purple Rain,” Prince’s “The Very Best Of Prince,” “NOW 58,” and Rob Zombie’s “The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser.”
Other top performers from a consumption standpoint: Prince’s “The Very Best Of Prince,” Prince’s “Purple Rain,” Rihanna’s “ANTI.”
