When Drake announced earlier this month that his More Life album (well, "playlist," as he calls it), would be released on March 18, everyone knew that the project would do massive numbers. Views, Drake's previous album, broke a bevy of streaming records, and many expected More Life to do the same. Drake was clearly up to the challenge because the album broke streaming records on both Apple Music and Spotify. And now that More Life's first week numbers are officially in, Drake has added yet another record to his resume.
Unsurprisingly, More Life landed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for the week ending March 23. The project, which was only made available digitally, earned 505,000 equivalent album units in the week ending March 23, according to Nielsen Music. This is the biggest week for an album since Drake's last project, Views, which moved 1.04 million units in its first week of release in May 2016.
This gives Drake his seventh consecutive No. 1 album, which ties him with Kanye West and Eminem for the second most consecutive No. 1 albums in hip-hop history. The trio trails Jay Z, who has 13 consecutive No. 1 albums.
(Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
And as for the record? A record 257,000 units were driven by streaming equivalent album units. This means that tracks from the album were streamed a whopping 384.8 million times over the course of the week (each unit equates to 1,500 song streams). The previous record holder was Drake's Views album, which earned 163,000 streaming equivalent units, which equates to 245.1 million song streams.
The other 248,000 units were comprised of 226,000 in traditional album sales (digital downloads of the entire album) and 23,000 TEA (Track Equivalent Album) units.
Congrats to Drake for the success of More Life.
