Despite the flak that streaming service-exclusive albums catch, it’s a strategy that always seems to pay off in the end. Whether it’s a record debuting first on Tidal (Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo) or the large amount that are exclusive to Apple Music (Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Drake’s Views), they’re a sure fire rise to the top.
Apple Music’s latest exclusive, Travis Scott’s Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight, is yet another success for streaming services, as the album is debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart and is Scott’s first number one record.
Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight is the long awaited album that finally arrived exclusively on Apple Music on September 2nd, and it was met with rave reviews. Birds earned 88,000 equivalent album units with 53,000 of those acting as traditional album sales, while tracks from the record had 50.2 million streams. Compared to Scott’s last record, Rodeo, it ultimately moved more equivalent units in the first week but sold less traditional sales (Rodeo earned 85,000 units and sold 70,000). With Travis Scott‘s number one debut, it makes it the fifth album this year to land at the top spot after being an Apple Music exclusive.
Judging from the success of Tidal and Apple Music exclusives, it doesn’t matter which streaming service is more popular, because as long as the right artist has an album there exclusively, then users will flock to it in order to hear it first. However, you have to wonder how long we’ve got until the fad dies out and consumers just get frustrated, since it’s never fun anticipating an album only to find out that it’s not available on your streaming service of choice, right?
