Kanye West breaks US album chart record

• Posted on April 12, 2016
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Kanye West has made music history in America as the first artist to reach number one on the US album chart mostly through streaming.

The Life of Pablo, which the rapper debuted at a fashion show at New York’s Madison Square Garden, was only available through Tidal to start with.

But the album was put on rival sites earlier this month.

The Life of Pablo has now gone straight to number on the Billboard 200 chart, nearly two months after its release.

Tracking service Nielsen Music said that the record has sold the equivalent of 94,000 copies in the week to last Thursday.

Seventy per cent of that total came through streaming.

Kanye West has beaten the previous record for the level of streaming behind a number one album – set recently by Rihanna, with streaming accounting for nearly a third of the sales of her album, Anti.

The pair are partners on Jay Z’s streaming service, Tidal.

Tidal is still much smaller than its rivals and it didn’t report initial figures in February for The Life of Pablo to Nielsen Music.

Songs off the album were streamed 99 million times in America – more than 30 times the total global subscriber base of Tidal.

The Life of Pablo has made it to number one without being available for sale on CD, vinyl or on Apple’s iTunes.

But Kanye has made it available for download through Tidal and his own website, which accounts for non-streaming sales in the past week.

It’s the seventh number one album for the rapper.

He encouraged fans to subscribe to Tidal after revealing that he was $53m (£37m) in debt and needed money to bring his “beautiful ideas to the world”.



-BBC