Chance The Rapper 1st Artist On Billboard’s Top 200 From Solely Music Streams
Chance the Rapper’s success has defied industry standards and now he’s breaking records as the first artist to land on the Billboard 200 chart from just streams.
Chance the Rapper’s career has broken ground in his independent focus and free music releases going against industry standard. Besides his unconventional music distribution Chance has achieved worldwide fame and acclaim. With his new album ‘Coloring Book’ he is taking that to new heights as Coloring Book becomes the first album to ever make into the Billboard 200 chart on streams alone.
The album was released on May 13th, exclusively for streaming on Apple Music where Coloring Book has since achieved 38,000 album equivalent streams (streams that add up to an album sale). According to Billboard that’s an incredible 57.3 million song streams, with 1,500 streams equalling an album.
The June 4th dated chart, to be released tomorrow, sees Chance debut in the Billboard 200 chart at number 8. Whilst technically other albums have charted thanks to streaming, like Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo gaining 99.3% of sales through streams, Chance is the first to do it with literally only streams – he’s never made an album or mixtape of his for sale commercially.
His independent, free approach to music releases saw a successful petition recently to make free music eligible for Grammy awards. Since the petition, which Chance personally supported, a rep has said it’s being taken into consideration for this year’s award ceremony.
If you want to listen to Coloring Book by Chance the Rapper you can hear it exclusively on Apple Music, until May 27th when it’s released on other streaming services.