Drake is dominating the charts by doing something no other artist has ever done
Mark Blinch/Reuters
Rapper Drake.
Drake’s album “Views” has topped the Billboard 200 album chart for a ninth straight week — the longest consecutive streak for an album since Adele’s “21″ dominated the charts for 10 straight weeks in 2012, according to The New York Times.
Drake’s album began its run on the charts with an explosive first week that tallied 852,000 physical album sales, but since then, “Views” has stuck around largely on the strength of its streaming.
This past week, Drake topped the chart with 110,000 album equivalent sales, according to Nielsen Music, but streaming comprised the vast majority of this figure.
Since “Views” only sold 25,000 physical copies in the last week, close to 73% of its “sales” came from the album’s nearly 100 million streams across services like Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal, according to Billboard.
With its nine-week streak at the top of the chart, “Views” is the first album to make such a consecutive run with streaming as a significant percentage of its sales since Billboard changed its charts to include streaming figures in November 2014. Taylor Swift notably kept her blockbuster album “1989″ off of streaming services upon its release that year, and Adele did the same with last year’s “25″ until several weeks ago.
As Billboard notes, Drake is also the first male artist to top the charts for nine consecutive weeks in over 10 years. The last male artist to tally even nine nonconsecutive weeks atop the chart was Usher with his 2004 album “Confessions.”
Drake has the chance to make history next week, as another consecutive week at No. 1 would tie Adele’s behemoth “21″ for 10 straight weeks atop the chart.
Either way, Drake has set a new precedent for what it means to be a blockbuster album in the age of streaming.
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