Kanye’s “Life of Pablo” grabs top spot in Billboard 200 albums chart

Kanye’s “Life of Pablo” grabs top spot in Billboard 200 albums chart

Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo” grabbed the n.1 spot on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart this week. 

There had been question marks as to whether the album would ever chart, given that Kanye had originally stated that it would never be released outside of Tidal  and that Tidal doesn’t report streams/sales to Soundscan.

The N.1 debut is notable because the album had already been out several weeks on Tidal, and also because it is the first time that an album reaches number 1 thanks in large part to streaming equivalent album sales. 

Billboard reports that 70% of the album’s units (66,000) were generated by streaming equivalent albums, equating to just under 100 million streams in the US. 

Kanye however didn’t break the record for the highest amount of streaming equivalent sales recorded in a given week, Justin Bieber still holds that as “Purpose” last year recorded 67,000 streaming equivalent albums.  

Kanye picked a good week to release the album into the wild, with no other major new releases in sight he had a very good chance of getting to the top spot even with relatively low sales figures. 

 

(Andrea Leonelli)