Jill Scott and Omi top Billboard charts, which now include Apple Music data
Jill Scott, seen performing last month in Cincinnati, topped the Billboard 200 chart this week with her new album, “Woman.â€
It may be too early to measure the success of Apple Music, but there’s at least one sign that the music industry is taking the tech giant’s just-launched streaming service seriously: Data from Apple Music is now part of the mix of statistics that determines placement on Billboard’s two most-watched charts, the Billboard 200 and the Hot 100.
R&B singer Jill Scott entered the former at No. 1 on Monday with her latest album, “Woman,†which sold slightly more than 57,000 copies and was streamed about 1.6 million times in its first week of availability, according to Nielsen Music. (Apple Music joins a group of streaming services tallied by Nielsen that also includes Spotify, Tidal, Rdio and Rhapsody, among others.)
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The growing impact of streaming is more obvious further down the Billboard 200, where the rapper Future came in at No. 2 this week with “DS2.†That album sold nearly 31,000 copies -- about 15,000 fewer than “VII: Sturm und Drang†by the heavy-metal band Lamb of God, which opened at No. 3. Yet songs from “DS2†were streamed 23 million times, more than enough to push Future’s record past Lamb of God’s on the chart.
The soundtrack to Jake Gyllenhaal’s boxing movie “Southpaw,†with music by Eminem, finished at No. 4, while another beneficiary of Apple Music -- Taylor Swift’s “1989†-- rounded out this week’s top 5. Sales of the pop superstar’s blockbuster album, available to stream only through Apple, fell to 22,000 copies, but “1989†had 2.4 million streams, according to Nielsen.
On the Hot 100, Billboard’s flagship singles chart, Omi’s “Cheerleader†held onto No. 1 for a fourth week with 148,000 paid downloads and 16.1 million streams. That was slightly fewer sales but significantly more streams than this week’s No. 2, “Can’t Feel My Face†by the Weeknd.
Expect to see both songs grappling with fresh competition on next week’s chart, which will reflect the release of One Direction’s “Drag Me Down.†On Monday, Spotify said the British boy band’s new single set a record for the most streams of a song in one day with 4.75 million.
Twitter: @mikaelwood
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