The year's biggest sales week was scored by Drake with his "Views" on the number one spot on Billboard 200 Album chart. According to Nielsen Music data, his album has sold just more than 1 million equivalent album units since it was released on iTunes and Apple Music.
Drake has crushed the streaming record of Beyoncé which was set just one week earlier, with her much talked about "Lemonade." Her music enjoyed 115 million plays on Tidal.
Since "Lemonade" was launched as an HBO special two weeks ago, it has sold around 974,000 equivalent album units through Amazon, iTunes and Tidal. About 681,000 of these were pure album sales.
But Drake' "Views" is outpacing Beyoncé's "Lemonade" since his total sales include 852,000 pure album sales, with 240,000 downloads and most amazingly, a record-breaking 245.1 million streams.
Drake's first ever hitting the number one spot in Billboard has been his goal since his "Bling" started scaling the hot 100 last year.
"If I get my first number one [as a lead] ... it will be the biggest moment of my career," Drake posted on Instagram last year.
With "Views," Drake has managed to sell in one week what Beyoncé' has sold in two weeks. This has puzzled industry observers especially with the hype given to her album's surprise release and lyrics that dwelt on an alleged cheating.
"I do find that surprising and I'm not sure that I have an explanation for it," said Jem Aswad, senior editor of Billboard.
One reason could be that Drake remained in the limelight last year with a steady stream of mixtapes such as "If You're Reading This It's Too Late," "What A Time to Be Alive," and songs such as "One Dance," Rihanna's "Work," and "Hotline Bling."
In addition, Drake's "One Dance" hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 recently. However, Beyoncé was not so active and has only one single released, "Formation" which peaked at number 10 on the Hot 100.
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