Drake said he’s “doing plat, plat only†and it turns out, it wasn’t just wishful thinking. Drake once again has the No. 1 album in the country, with Views spending a second week on top of the Billboard 200. More importantly, he now has the first album of 2016 to surpass 1 million in sales, with 175,000 more in pure sales last week, putting him at 1.03 million total sold in just two weeks. (He previously broke the single-week streaming record to debut with 1.04 million in album equivalents last week.) Adele’s 25 is the only other album to sell more than a million in 2016, but that was released in 2015. Last week, Views did 313,000 in album equivalents, while Beyoncé’s Lemonade finished with 202,000 units (153,000 pure sales) to come in at No. 2.
Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool has debuted at No. 3, with 181,000 album equivalents and 173,000 in pure sales (their biggest sales week since 2003’s Hail to the Thief), making it technically the second-best-selling album of the previous week (more than Beyoncé). But despite allowing the album on Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play, and more, the band’s streaming numbers were no match for Beyoncé’s and Drake’s, pushing them down to No. 3 — a growing trend on the charts. (Radiohead also had two fewer days of eligibility on the chart, thanks to a Sunday release.) Somewhere, Spotify execs are smirking.