January 16, 2019

Latest Billboard #1 Album Sells Just 823 Copies

It’s a known fact that physical sales are in decline, but what does it mean when you can get a #1 album on the Billboard 200 chart by selling only 823 copies? A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie‘s latest project, HOODIE SZN, reached that dubious mark, which should put the importance of the CD or album into the proper prospective.

So how do you get to #1 with less than a 1,000 album sales? 83 million streams does it, and that’s how Billboard and Nielsen now determines chart position – a combination of physical and download sales and streams. The thing is, there were no physical sales in this case – all 823 album sales were downloads! Hoodie’s label didn’t even release a physical album to retailers.

When you take those 83 million streams and divide by 1,500 (the number of streams that make up an album, at least as far as the industry is concerned), that comes out to a bit more than 55,000 total albums. But it’s a false equivalency, since the streams could all be for one song instead of other songs on the album.

This isn’t a new trend either. The #1 the week before by 21 Savage sold just 3,481 physical albums and had 84 million total streams. Remember the days when 100,000 sales or more was needed to hit that #1 spot?

We live in a world of different music consumption today, and it behooves artists to understand the lack of importance of both the album and physical product to their overall success. It’s true that some older artists make a fair amount on CDs sold at a gig, but that’s still a declining market. The upfront costs of making a CD or vinyl album, plus the time it takes to manufacture, is quite high, especially when compared to digital distribution.

Release music online regularly and often is still the best strategy for an artist today. The numbers bear it out.

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