Drake’s “Scorpion” Sales May Be Affected By New Billboard Charting Metric
by Site Manager
It’s a known fact that Drake will make his fans to stream Scorpion, his long-awaited double album set to arrive at midnight.
Given the array of sales records Drake seems to break every other week, many have already projected Scorpion to follow-suit, even after his beef with Pusha T. Yet it would appear that Drake’s upcoming project may have one additional hurdle to overcome. Billboard has been ushering in a new weighting system to determine what makes the charts, with all changes set to kick in tomorrow, June 29th.
In early May, Billboard finalized its new weighting system to calculate the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 albums charts. The changes are set to be implemented starting June 29. According to the new metric, Billboard 200 is now divided into two categories. On both charts, plays from paid subscription services such as Apple Music, TIDAL, and Spotify’s subscription tier are now assigned greater weight than streams on free, ad-supported services such as YouTube and Spotify’s free tier. Drake has traditionally been one of the most streamed artists. Prior to the release of Post Malone’s ‘beerbongs & bentleys,’ the Toronto rapper held the record for the biggest streaming week thanks to his 2017 playlist ‘More Life.’ Although Billboard’s new weighting metric will likely mean ‘Scorpion’ has lower overall streaming numbers, Drake may not be affected as much as other artists. He has a strong history with Apple Music dating back to his Beats 1 Radio show OVO Sound.