The fragmented launch of Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo has paid off: the rapper’s seventh album has made music history in the US by becoming the first album to reach No 1 in the charts primarily through streaming, two months after its initial release.
The Life of Pablo was initially launched in February at New York’s Madison Square Garden to coincide with the launch of his new Yeezy fashion season. It was then available to stream exclusively through Tidal before being made available on 1 April via iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify and other major services.
I also wanted to point out that it’s the first album to go number 1 off of streaming!!!
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 9, 2016
According to Nielsen, the album shifted 94,000 equivalent album units (each unit equals 1,500 streams from an album) in the week ending 7 April. Of that total only 28,000 were physical albums. These traditional sales were from album and ticket offers for West’s show at Madison Square Garden and its live stream in theatres and cinemas. What’s even more unusual about the release of The Life of Pablo is that none of its tracks were available for individual purchase; the album’s success is owed solely to streams and traditional album sales.
Previously, Rihanna’s Anti topped the charts with 44.6% of its total units (54,000) derived from streams, selling 17,000 in traditional album sales, while Justin Bieber’s Purpose remains the most streamed album to date, with 205m global streams and 77m in America in its first week.
The Life of Pablo has also been revolutionary in West’s constant evolution of the record. In a statement to the New York Times, the label Def Jam explained that a “newly updated, remixed and remastered version” of The Life of Pablo would be streaming, and that the album would continue to be edited by West: “In the months to come, Kanye will release new updates, new versions and new iterations of the album.”
