Nicki Minaj, J. Cole and Fabolous are all heading into 2015 with some great news, as they all had a strong sales week on Billboard with their respective new projects. As Nicki enters the second week of The Pinkprint being in stores, she follows up its 244k debut with another solid 156,000 units sold (105k of which are pure album sales,) maintaining her number 2 spot behind Taylor Swift’s 1989. That puts the HB at 400k already, with just 100k more to go until gold status! Behind Nicki is J. Cole, who enters his third week of 2014 Forest Hills Drive at number 6 with 120k. The North Carolina native hit gold last week, so he’s now on his journey to platinum status. As for Fabolous, his new album The Young OG Project released on Christmas day, made available ONLY online. So, with less than a week on the charts (as albums traditionally release on Tuesdays, not Thursday like Loso,) and nothing to buy in any store (since some people still live in the stone age and don’t have iTunes and Google Play accounts,) Fab STILL managed to sell a whopping 71,000 units, debuting at number 12! That’s huge!
Billboard’s Top 10 Album Sales, Week Ending 12/7/14 … Congrats To Mary J. Blige On A Top 10 Debut!
We are in the second week of Billboard’s revamped metric system for the top albums in the country, and Taylor Swift is still sitting pretty at the top. 1989 moved 274,000 units in the week ending December 7, with 44k of that number due to the new calculations. As previously reported, Billboard will now factor album streaming and single sales into the overall tally, with 1,500 streams (on providers like Spotify, Pandora, etc.) counting toward 1 full sale, and 10 single purchases as 1 sale as well. However, the Billboard 200 chart (which is all genres in one) is the only chart to use this system, as the specific genre charts will remain with the original formula for now. As I noted last week, hip-hop doesn’t seem to be benefitting all that much from the change. It’s quite noticeable this week as Rick Ross, Eminem and Beyoncé were all knocked out of the top 10 after just one week there. Mary J. Blige debuts this week with The London Sessions, however, moving 57,000 units since its release last week. Only 2,000 come from streaming and/or single sales, though. Check out the full top 10 below!
Eminem, Rick Ross & Beyoncé Debut In The Top 10 On The REVAMPED Billboard 200
A few weeks back, the Billboard 200 announced that they would be making the biggest change in their 23-year history. Instead of calculating album sales solely by physical and digital albums purchased, they revealed that they’d now be incorporating streaming and single downloads into the calculations as well. For every 1500 streams (on providers like Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play and more,) the artist will be credited as getting one full album sale, as well as for every 10 singles purchased. They will not change the current charts for specific genres just yet, however, and will also keep a separate chart called Top Album Sales, where they will continue to calculate sales in the traditional manor.
