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The smart money was thatBillboardwas refereeing a fight between the two acts battling for that weeks No.
That fight may be far from over.
In the early 2010s, the concert-plus-album bundle took off.
1 albums thanks to concert bundles.
It becamedebatablewhether the album download was worth anything.
1 spot against Scotts weeks-longseries of clothing releasescumalbum downloads, which kept hisAstroworldalbum on top for multiple weeks.
(Long story short: Minaj claimed her merch required an album opt-in; Scotts didnt.
Shemay have had a point.)
This summers battle, between Khaled and Tyler, is essentially a replay of the MinajScott your-merch-is-dirtier-than-my-merch spat.
(Billboardhas long had rules on throwing out anomalous album sales that appear artificially inflated.)
In essence, a player is calling outBillboardfor hating the game.
And it is a game.
And again, these bundled sales are not broken out, even to Nielsen data recipients and journalists.
The industrys shift to streaming has a lot to do with it.
Albums in the late 2010s routinely top the charts with the bulk of their data from streaming.
It is now common for No.
For example, check out the sales report forBackstreet Boys recent No.
Translation: That sales figure was overwhelmingly downloads from a tour bundle, not actual album purchases.
(The industryrumor millpegs the Backstreet bundle at more than 80 percent of sales that week.)
Reviewing the last 12 months of these album charts, the No.
That leaves 23 weeks where sales (or sales) were a bigger factor in the No.
And the bundle was virtually always the major factor.
For two more of those weeks, the chart was commanded byK-pop boy band giants BTS.
This spurred fans to buy multiple copies gimmicky, but charmingly old-school.
Then he wouldnt be consulting with lawyers.
Its pretty ironic: What might kill the album, ultimately, isnt Spotify its Travis Scott and hishoodies.
