since billboard implemented their new anti-bundle policy in october 2020, a whopping 4 albums have sold over 100,000 copies (pure sales) in their respective first weeks. in that same time span, 13 albums have accumulated over 100 million streams in their first weeks.

bundles inflated first week sales and now that bundles are virtually banned you have major artists like ariana grande and justin bieber selling ~40k copies first week. since billboard refuses to increase the weight of streaming (haven't since 2018) most artist's first week sales look underwhelming, even if they accumulated a large amount of streams.

albums that have sold over 100k copies since october 2020:

Taylor Swift - Fearless (Taylor's Version) - 179,000
BTS - BE - 177,000
Taylor Swift - Evermore - 154,000
AC/DC - Power Up - 111,000

albums that have accumulated over 100 million streams since october 2020:

J. Cole - The Off-Season - 315 million streams (based on HDD's numbers, not official)
Morgan Wallen - Dangerous: The Double Album - 240 million streams
Taylor Swift - Evermore - 220 million streams
Rod Wave - Soulfly- 189 million streams
Ariana Grande - Positions - 173 million streams
Justin Bieber - Justice - 157 million streams
Moneybagg Yo - A Gangsta's Pain - 147 million streams
Bad Bunny - El Último Tour Del Mundo - 146 million streams
Taylor Swift - Fearless (Taylor's Version) - 143 million
YSL Records - Slime Language 2 - 143 million streams
Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red - 126 million streams
DJ Khaled - Khaled Khaled - 107 million streams
Luke Combs - What You See Is What You Get Deluxe - 102 million streams

TL;DR:
it doesn't make any sense to judge a commercial performance on a dying platform that clearly doesn't reflect how popular the music is (pure sales), so instead we should be looking at how many streams were accumulated in the first week.

Its time for me to take a piss

it's time to spark this blunt n bump some rio da yung og

it’s time for camp lazlo

ktt2.com/why-are-streams-equated-with-sales-79443

Agreed. I see popular Twitter pages like chartdata reporting pure sales less and less

Should be average streams per song

As much as I’m on board with this, to play devil’s advocate, one could make the argument that because there are still people who buy music, it puts even more of a highlight on how much more in demand high selling+streaming artists “truly” are than those who don’t sell well but only stream well

But there’s also holes in this too. Basically I’m saying: this should be a good thread lmao

short albums = higher streams per song

Sounds good to me!

Why you include off season in the streams but not the sales when it sold over 288k? I think you’re right but seems like your sources/numbers are inconsistent

ignorant thread. @op

we can still use sales/units lmao

using streams is an ignorant way to measure

You must be pushing 40

billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8470785/travis-scott-entire-astroworld-album-on-streaming-songs
Bundles only revealed the truth

units is still the best way. ur ignorant af.

1250 paid streams = 1 sale/unit
3750 free = 1 sale/unit

those are the streaming numbers from the album listed on HDD

m.hitsdailydouble.com/streaming_songs

which means he did like 50k pure

But how many faking they streams tho?

Getting they plays from machines OP?

so why would u not just use units 🥴

because that also gives less weight to youtube and free streams lmao

what's the point of converting streams into sales equivalent units when sales are dead?

I’m down with that but I think sales and streams should be separate stats at this point, do stream units and sales units

using total stream count sounds brainless because its not factoring in free streams vs paid streams like units does. also people still buy physicals and digital sales

that 288k are his streaming units = ~230k + pure sales = ~50k