Apr 12, 2016
Words by Eugene Cheng
Kanye West has made his mark in the music world yet again, scoring another No. 1 album, The Life of Pablo, on the Billboard 200 chart. This is his seventh No. 1 album out of eight full length releases.
Not only is The Life of Pablo atop the charts, moving 94,000 units this week, it’s also the first No. 1 album to have a majority of its units consist of online streams.
Out of the 94,000 units counted by Billboard, 66,000 came from streaming services. That equates to roughly 99 million U.S. streams. Billboard calls this “streaming equivalent albums.”
The Life of Pablo was first released as an Tidal-exclusive, leading many to either download the app (the app reached the top spot on Apple’s US App Store) or to illegally download the album (over 500,00 times).
Within the first ten days of the album’s release, Kanye’s newest album garnered an estimated 250 million streams.
Earlier in the year he also rewrote the rules of album releases by making changes to his eighth studio album weeks after its initial release via Tidal streaming service. Whether such practices will become a mainstay in albums released online is still a mystery.
Image: Rolling Stone