Drake, surprising no one, has the number one album in the country this week. Beyoncé moved to number two, Prince was at three.
As expected, Drake’s Views album debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with an explosive first week. The set earned 1.04 million equivalent album units in the week ending May 5 in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music. Traditional album sales comprised 852,000 copies of that sum (a slight upgrade from the 851,000 that was previously reported).
The RIAA has announced that they will be counting streams as part of certifying albums and singles Gold or Platinum:
After a comprehensive analysis of a variety of factors – including streaming and download consumption patterns and historical impact on the program – and also consultation with a myriad of industry colleagues, the RIAA set the new Album Award formula of 1,500 on-demand audio and/or video song streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale. Also effective today, RIAA’s Digital Single Award ratio will be updated from 100 on-demand streams = 1 download to 150 on-demand streams = 1 download to reflect streaming’s enormous growth in the two plus years since that ratio was set.
I think this move was inevitable. There’s a good chance that in our lifetime album “sales” will be rendered irrelevant. The full press release can be found below.