More Life gave Drake and his team something to celebrate this week after the album debut at No. 1 on Billboard 200 chart.
The playlist sold 505,000 album equivalent units in the first week of release according to Billboard. More Life marks Drake’s 7th No. 1 album to date. Nielsen Music also reported that this is the biggest album debut since Drake’s Views last April which sold a whopping 1.04 million copies in the first week.
Breaking down the numbers, More Life saw 384.8 million streams which equate to 257,000 units. The rest of the numbers are from traditional album sales. This beat the previous streaming record which was held by Views which saw 245.1 million streams in the first week equating to 163,000 streaming equivalent album units. The album is only available digitally and 226,000 copies were bought and download in the first week. Another 23,000 units were from TEA. Views sold 852,000 copies from traditional album sales through digital download in the first week. More Life was streamed 300 million times on Apple Music alone on week one.
Drake has announced that physical CD copies of More Life will be released on March 31 and a vinyl LP version at a later date. With his 7th Billboard 200 No. 1 album, Drake currently ties with Eminem and Kanye West for the most No. 1 albums on the chart among hip hop artists. Jay Z holds the top spot with 13 No. 1 albums over his career. Given his mild beef with Drake, there sure to be some competition on who can be the hip hop king of the chart.
Drake also broke the record for most streams in one day on both Apple Music (89.9 million) and Spotify (61.3 million). Seems Drizzy’s partnership with Apple Music is proving to be mutually beneficial to both parties because Beats 1 is seeing some of its highest listening numbers and Drake is moving large numbers of streams on the platform.
The Toronto rapper will be kicking off his final two “Boy Meets World” tour dates tonight in Amsterdam. The final concert of the tour will be tomorrow night at the Ziggo Dome.
