Many expected Drake’s record-breaking new album Views to arrive on Spotify today – but it turns out Apple Music has the streaming exclusive for another week.
Views was released on Apple Music and iTunes last Friday (April 29).
Apple has now confirmed it will arrive on Spotify on May 13th, when it will also be serviced to other streaming providers.
During its first five days on sale, the set has been streamed over 250m times globally, according to Apple – with over 200m of those in the US alone.
Those stats roughly match up with what we’ve heard from market monitor BuzzAngle (see chart below), meaning Views has comfortably smashed the US week-one streaming album record.
The previous holder of that title was Beyonce’s Columbia-issued album, Lemonade – a TIDAL streaming exclusive – which spawned 115.5m on-demand audio streams in the US in its opening seven days.
Beyonce beat the record set by Justin Bieber last year when songs from Purpose were streamed more than 100m times.
Drake’s jaw-dropping quarter of a billion global streaming figure counts for Apple Music only – so doesn’t include the listens Drake’s singles Hotline Bling, Pop Style and One Dance have racked up this week on non-Apple services such as Spotify.
Drake is currently the second biggest artist worldwide on Spotify, with 29.74m active monthly listeners.
One Dance is the biggest track in the world on Spotify’s Global Top 50, with 6.4m daily plays.
Hotline Bling, Drake’s most popular Spotify track, has 434.67m plays to date – generating around $3m for the star and his fellow rights-holders.
Over to iTunes, where over 1 million albums have been downloaded worldwide within View’s first five days on sale, reaching #1 on the iTunes Top Albums Chart in over 95 countries.
Views is also expected to top the Billboard Top 200 and the Official U.K. Charts today.
Drake’s fourth set is released via Young Money/Cash Money/Republic Records and will be available at all physical and digital download retailers today.
Music Business Worldwide
