Ariana Grande | Photo by: Andrew Lipovsky/NBC)
En route to a #1 debut on the Billboard 200, Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next” accomplished an impressive achievement on the streaming front.
Based on preliminary data, the twelve-track album comfortably broke the record for most single-week US audio streams for an album by a female artist.
Near-final estimates from Hits Daily Double and BuzzAngle have the album’s tracks doing upwards of 306 million US audio streams this week (February 8-14). While Billboard’s final, more authoritative data may differ to a moderate degree, the discrepancy will not be nearly enough to jeopardize its claim to the record.
Cardi B’s “Invasion of Privacy,” the previous record holder, drove just under 203 million US streams in its first week.
The figure will, moreover, more than double the sub-130 million mark generated by Grande’s previous album “sweetener.” At the time, the “sweetener” tally was the biggest recorded by a female pop album.
— Hits and BuzzAngle should release more precise streaming figures (as well as pure sales and track sales data) Friday night. Billboard will then publish its own data on Sunday.
Both sets of data will confirm a clear reality: “thank u, next” was America’s #1 album for the February 8-14 tracking period.