Prince Tops Billboard Charts (Week Ending April 21st)

Jason Tate Apr 25, 2016

Prince’s albums The Very Best of Prince and Purple Rain are the top two albums on the Billboard 200 this week.

The Very Best of Prince earned 179,000 equivalent album units in the week ending April 21 (up 10,872 percent compared to the previous week). Of that sum, 100,000 were in traditional album sales (up 11,232 percent). As for Purple Rain, it shifted 69,000 units (63,000 in pure album sales; up 3,101 percent).
Prince died on April 21, the final day of the latest tracking week for the new chart, meaning that fans rushed to purchase his music in the roughly half-day left in the tracking week (after the news broke around 10 a.m. PT), enough to send him to Nos. 1 and 2. We will see continued impact from the icon’s passing on the following week’s chart, dated May 14 (reflecting activity in the week ending April 28).

The Billboard 200 (Week Ending April 14th)

Jason Tate Apr 18, 2016

The Lumineers have their first number one album on the Billboard 200. Deftones appear at number two with 71,000 copies sold (69,000 pure album sales).

Chris Stapleton’s Traveller dips 2-3 with 48,000 units (down 34 percent), while Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo descends 1-4 with 47,000 units (down 50 percent). The album fell 95 percent in traditional album sales, falling from a 28,000 start to a little more than 1,000 copies sold. (Much of its first week sales were bolstered by pre-orders not delivered until after the album saw a wide release on April 1. Those pre-orders were sold as part of a ticket/album bundle to his Yeezy 3 fashion show held at Madison Square Garden and screened via a live stream in movie theaters. The remaining sales were from Tidal and West’s official website.)

Weezer Debuts at #4

Jason Tate Apr 12, 2016

Weezer’s latest album debuted at No. 4 on the new Billboard 200, moving a little over 49,000 units.

Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ Hits Number One

Jason Tate Apr 10, 2016

Keith Caulfield, writing for Billboard, reports that Kanye Westʼs The Life of Pablo will debut at number one on the Billboard 200 charts.

The Life of Pablo is the first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 where the majority (70 percent, in fact) of its units were generated by streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Its 66,000 SEA units equates to just over 99 million U.S. streams for the album’s tracks in the week ending April 7. (Each SEA unit is equal to 1,500 streams from an album.)