UPDATE: The final Soundscan numbers are in. The album sold 94k units of which 28k were pure album sales from his website while rest were from streaming. The Life of Pablo is the first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 where the majority (70%) of its units were generated by streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Its 66k SEA units equates to just over 99 million U.S. streams for the album’s tracks in the week. Each SEA unit is equal to 1,500 streams from an album.
Previous story (April 8th):
Kanye West has made history this week by becoming the first artist to score a number 1 album based solely on streaming numbers.
HDD reports that his new album The Life of Pablo, which initially released as a Tidal exclusive back in February, has moved 90k copies in the first week. Although the digital album was put on sale on his official website last week, the number comes predominantly from streaming on services like Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal. The first week number should be more than enough to assure a #1 chart debut on Billboard this week.
After an exclusive window with Tidal for several weeks, the album was made available last week through Def Jam across various streaming services. Several songs from the album shot up the iTunes charts upon the album’s release on Apple’s store, most notably the official single ‘Famous‘. The Life of Pablo has been confirmed to be a “living” album by Universal Music which will keep getting updated in the coming months.