We already knew it was coming, but now Drake officially has the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart after his new album ‘Views’ moved 1.04 million album units in its first week.
Out of those 1.04 million albums, 852,000 of them were pure sales. The rest were streams.
via Billboard:
Views is Drake’s sixth straight No. 1 album, and follows the chart topping bows of What a Time To Be Alive (with Future, in 2015), If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (2015),Nothing Was the Same (2013), Take Care (2012) and Thank Me Later (2010). His only charting album to miss the top was his debut EP, So Far Gone, which peaked at No. 6 in 2009.
It was earlier reported that Views’ sales start is a personal best sales week for Drake, the largest for any album in 2016, and the biggest for a male artist in over three years. The last album by a man to post a bigger sales week was Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience when it debuted with 968,000 copies sold in the week ending March 24, 2013.
Views’ songs were streamed a record 245.1 million times in the U.S. during the tracking week. That sum includes plays of the album’s songs on Apple Music, as well as the handful of songs from the set that were available at other streaming services like Spotify. Previously, the biggest week for streams from an album was Justin Bieber’s Purpose, which racked up just over 100 million plays for its songs during it debut week (ending Nov. 19, 2015).
Views’ 245.1 million streams for its songs equates to 163,392 SEA units. (Each SEA unit represents 1,500 streams.)
Beyonce’s Lemonade album slips from No. 1 to No. 2 in its second week, moving 321,000 units (down 51 percent). Of those 321,000 units it sold another 196,000 copies (down 60 percent).
