Noah Kahan has his first number one album:
Noah Kahan has scored his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with his fourth album “The Great Divide,” opening with 389,000 equivalent album units.
Kahan’s debut marks the biggest week for a rock album since the charts started measuring by units at the end of 2014
Harry Styles still has the number one album in the country. Sturgill Simpson’s record debut at number three despite not having a streaming release.
Johnny Blue Skies (formerly Sturgill Simpson) & the Dark Clouds’ Mutiny After Midnight debuts at No. 3 with 59,000 equivalent album units earned — all from physical album sales. It’s the best week yet, by units earned or album sales, for the artist. It’s the second top 10-charting project for Simpson, following the No. 3-peaking A Sailor’s Guide to Earth in 2016. Mutiny After Midnight is currently only available on CD, vinyl and cassette. No release date has been announced for a streaming version or a digital download for purchase.
Harry Styles has the number one album in the country this week.
Harry Styles’ fourth solo studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated March 21) with 430,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending March 12, according to Luminate
Megan Moroney’s new album, Cloud 9, debuts at number one on the charts. Hilary Duff is at three.
The country star earned her first chart-topper as “Cloud 9” began with 147,000 equivalent album units. This denotes the biggest week for a country album by a woman in almost two years, following Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” in April 2024. Moroney’s “Cloud 9” is her third studio album and second to debut in the top 10 after “Am I Okay?” bowed at No. 9 in 2024. Her 2023 debut, “Lucky,” previously peaked at No. 38.
The Paradox’s “Get the Message” is number one at alternative radio.
YouTube has announced it’s pulling its data from Billboard’s charts:
Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported. This doesn’t reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.
Paul Resnikoff, writing for Digital Music News, has the argument for why YouTube should change, not Billboard:
That logic goes something like this: more dedicated, paying fans – and their purchases – are far more valuable to the music industry and its artists, songwriters, publishers, and labels than freebie ad-supported ones. And the charts should reflect that.
The rest is just making up the numbers to fit. Paid stuff feeds the music industry, and accordingly, it weighs more heavily in the rankings. It’s logical enough.
Just one problem: in that framework, YouTube will never be a heavy chart influencer compared to other streaming platforms and formats. The harsh reality is that YouTube Music, once a promising paid platform, never materialized as a serious competitor to Apple Music or Spotify – and with the music subscription market now maturing, it’s unlikely to catch up.
Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You” has once again topped the charts:
The recurrent tune surges four spots to the Hot 100 summit, tying the record for most weeks at the top alongside Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. It also marks the seventh consecutive year that “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has hit No. 1. The song previously became Carey’s 19th No. 1 on the Hot 100, the most for any solo artist and only one behind the Beatles as the record-holder.
This week, Breaking Rust landed the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart for the second week in a row with the song “Walk My Walk.” But Breaking Rust is not a real person or a real band. It’s an AI project credited to songwriter Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, but the mysterious “artist” has over 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Another AI-generated country singer, Cain Walker, also dominated the Country Digital Song Sales chart this week with tracks in the third, ninth, and eleventh spots. Billboard distinguishes both Walker and Breaking Rust’s music as “virtual acts,” which offers some degree of transparency that the artists and/or the art is AI generated.
We really don’t have to do this.
One month after its release, Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” logs a major milestone as it hits a fn uninterrupted four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
The set is just the second album of 2025 to spend its first four weeks at the summit, following Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem,” which led for its first eight weeks (and 12 weeks overall). Not surprisingly, Swift’s fourth week numbers are significant; she has earned a total of 146,000 album units in the United States in the week ending Oct. 30, according to Luminate.
Taylor Swift still has the number one album:
Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” era continues as the record notches a third straight week at No. 1 with 194,000 equivalent album units earned, according to Luminate. The 12-song record shows no signs of slowing down — it’s only the second album of 2025 to spend its first three weeks atop the chart, following Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem,” which held the position for first eight weeks.
Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl sold many, many albums. The press release can be found below.
Read More “Taylor Swift Has Biggest First Week in Music History”
According to initial reports to data tracking firm Luminate, the tracks on The Life of a Showgirl have generated more than 460 million on-demand official streams in the United States since the album’s release on Oct. 3. There are multiple versions of album on streaming services: a standard 12-song edition, a track-by-track commentary edition that includes the 12 songs plus commentary tracks from Swift, and a track-by-track commentary edition that has Swift’s commentary and lyric videos for each of the songs. […] The sales continue to come in to Luminate for The Life of a Showgirl and it may soon topple Adele’s longstanding record for the largest sales week for an album in the modern era. Adele’s 25 debuted with 3.378 million copies sold in its first week in 2015 — the biggest sales week for any album since Luminate began tracking data in 1991 (when the modern era of music sales tabulation began).
Taylor Swift’s new album brought in over $33 million at the box office and 2.7 million day-one album sales.
Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl launch has shown once again that it’s Taylor’s world and the rest of us are just living in it. The special album release event dwarfed the competition at the box office over the weekend, debuting to an impressive $33 million domestic and $13 million overseas. That’s a record-breaking number for what is neither a concert film nor a documentary, but a timed promotional event for the release of her new album.
The album dropped on Friday and is already setting records. After just one day, The Life of a Showgirl has secured the second-highest weekly sales for any album since tracking of such things began in the early 1990s. Billboard’s Luminate reported that the album sold 2.7 million copies on Friday alone.
Twenty One Pilots have the number one album in the country.
Read More “Twenty One Pilots Debut at Number One”
Yellowcard’s “Better Days” has cracked the top ten at alternative radio.