Despite the hype surrounding his latest album release, Billboard magazine has announced that Kanye West’s Donda 2 will be ineligible for placement on the Billboard charts.
The controversy stems from Ye’s decision to release Donda 2 on his proprietary Stem Player device exclusively. The bundling of the player and the album violates Billboard chart’s merchandise bundle policy, which disqualifies albums that come bundled with physical merchandise.
Billboard announced the bundling rule back in 2020, stating that selling merchandise along with a physical album or digital album download (often a free download) as a way to boost album sales numbers would skew sales numbers. The practice had been a point of controversy for the chart-ranking publication for many years. Critics of bundling had suggested that bundling put newer (and less wealthy) artists at a disadvantage because they could only offer an album, not merchandise.
WestWest’sm player has been a successful venture for the artist. The player, which comes pre-loaded with a variety of WestWest’sums (depending on what year the player was purchased), has reportedly sold 39,500 units for a total of about $8.6 million.
As of March 7, all Stem player owners can reportedly download Donda 2 to their devices.
