When reporting on album sales numbers from Hits Daily Double and BuzzAngle, Headline Planet cautions that their numbers can differ slightly from those reported by Billboard.
The slight discrepancies do not, however, typically affect key outcomes on the chart. The album that earns #1 in the Hits/BuzzAngle universe almost always claims #1 on Billboard’s charts.
There have, however, been a few exceptions. This week features one of them.
Hits reports that Taylor Swift’s “reputation” earns #1 on the overall consumption chart with 109K in total units. Luke Bryan’s new “What Makes You Country” takes #2 with 108K total units.
The Billboard 200, however, has the positions flipped. “What Makes You Country” earns #1 with what Billboard reports as 108K units, while a consumption tally of 100K positions “reputation” at #2.
Consumption, as a reminder, is the sum of pure album sales, TEA (track sales/10) and SEA (track streams/1500).
“What Makes You County” convincingly leads on the pure sales front — and thus takes #1 on the Billboard Top Album Sales chart. “Reputation” generated more units from SEA and TEA, but the track sales and streams were not enough to close the gap.
The next few positions on the Billboard 200 mirror those of the Hits/BuzzAngle “sales plus streaming” chart, but Billboard’s unit numbers are slightly lower in each case. Ed Sheeran’s “Divide” is #3, Pentatonix’s “A Pentatonix Christmas” is #4, Quality Control’s “Control The Streets, Volume 1” is #5, and Big Sean & Metro Boomin’s “Double Or Nothing” is #6.