Drake's new album, Views, is on its way to become a million seller on its week of release in the United States without even being available on physical formats. The new album, which dropped April 29, has sold over 822,000 units in the US and 89,000 in Canada through three days (April 29 to May 2), according to BuzzAngle Music, which tracks downlaods and streams in North America.
Of Drake's 822,455 album units (sales + stream), 728,450 are album sales; in addition, Views (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic) clocked 122 million song streams. In her second week, Beyoncé’s Lemonade (Columbia)was still strong with 188,000 units in the US and 13,000 in Canada over three days. Prince’s Purple Rain came in third.
Drake’s first day of sales, tracked by BuzzAngle, showed that he shifted 582,289 album project units, 574,604 of which were sales. On his second day, the tally was up to 740,000 units in the US, surpassing in two days Beyoncé’s full week numbers for the previous week for Lemonade.
Both albums were exclusives: Drake’s to iTunes Store for sales and Apple Music for streaming, and Beyoncé’s to Tidal, and neither album was available in physical format on the first week of release.
According to BuzzAngle, in her opening week, Lemonade was No.1 on the BuzzAngle Music Album Project US Chart for the week of starting April 22 with 656,484 album project units (including 489K album sales, 908K song sales and 115.5M streams). James Donio, President of the Music Business Association, noted that Beyoncé scored "the biggest sales week of the year to date” continuing her "remarkable winning streak, as all six of her albums have topped the charts in their first frame."
During that week, Prince had four of the top five singles and six titles in the top 10 albums (Purple Rain at No.2, The Very Best of Prince at No.3, The Hits/The B-Siades at No.4, 1999 at No.5, Ultimate Prince at No.6 and Parade at No.10). Over the eight days since Prince’s death, Prince titles have garnered 843,000 album sales, 3.8m song sales and 34.7m song streams, according to BuzzAngle Music.
