In other words, it’s very possibly Ocean violated his contract by releasing another album on the heels of his last delivered for Def Jam.
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The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the US based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Only Drake’s fifth album Views (1.04 million) and Beyonce’s Lemonade (653,000) registered higher sales totals in their first weeks this year.
The album is also reigning supreme at the top of the United Kingdom album charts, making it his first number one album in the country.
Impressively, Blonde gave Ocean the third-largest debut in 2016 in both album units and pure sales. According to Billboard, his visual album is deemed ineligible.
Data released to Music Business Worldwide (MBW) by MUSO – a data-analytics and “piracy audience reconnection” specialist – shows that as of midday United Kingdom time on August 25, Ocean’s album had been illegally downloaded 753,849 times.
Confusing complications like these are one of the reasons Pandora is pushing to launch its own on-demand-style service this year, along the lines of Apple Music. It follows Blink-182’s California and The Lumineers’ Cleopatra.
On the mini-trend of artists releasing “visual albums”, Morris says “I just liked it better when they called them music videos”.
Blonde displaced the Suicide Squad soundtrack from the top spot, which falls to Number 3 as Drake’s aforementioned Views, still selling strongly after four months, remains at Number 2. However, since then the musician has released Blond and while his fans are once more in love with his music, it would seem that more people are illegally downloading the new Frank Ocean album than they are purchasing it.
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If Endless does release its songs for purchase on places like iTunes or as a physical album, then Billboard will start tallying up those listens. Lindsey Stirling also does well, claiming her second top 10 album with “Brave Enough” which goes in at five with 49,000 units. Since Ocean’s visual album is sold only a full 45-minute project, the question Billboard asks is “does one stream of a 45-minute visual album equate to one album unit?”
