All week, the sales numbers for Drake‘s Views album–formerly Views From the 6–have been discussed. Will he go platinum? Could he go double-platinum? How much will his huge streaming numbers impact the final count? Well, we now know the answer to those questions, as the official sales and streaming numbers have been revealed ahead of tomorrow’s official Billboard reports.
Views tallied 1.045 million equivalent units in its first week of release–the album dropped on Friday, April 29–giving Drake the first-week million he’s been after for much of his career. Pure album sales accounted for a very large hoard of the final count, 852,000 to be exact, and his record week on the streaming services took care of the rest. Republic Records reported late last week that Views had been streamed over 250 million times in less than 6 days, and the actual number sits right at 245 million, which crushes the previous record, held by Justin Bieber‘s November album, Purpose.
It’s by far the biggest first-week sales performance of Drake’s career, topping Nothing Was The Same’s 653,000 first-week mark by just under 400,000 units. Of course, back in 2013, there was no RIAA formula for converting streaming units to album sales equivalents, but Views‘ pure album sales still tops the first-week pure album sales performance of any Drake release by at least 200,000.
It’s worth noting, this is the 6th consecutive Drake release to top the Billboard 200, which is comparable to the record Beyonce set last week, when Lemonade topped the Billboard 200, making her the first artist to ever have her first six solo albums top the Billboard 200. Of course, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and What A Time To Be Alive are considered mixtapes, though they were technically the #1 albums in the country when they were released.
