Kanye West lands first ever US number one album based on streams

Record breaker: Kanye West is the first artist to land a number one album through streams
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Yeezy Season 3
Jennifer Ruby12 April 2016
The Weekender

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Kanye West has achieved the first US number one album based on streams.

The rapper’s latest album The Life of Pablo has broken a new a chart record by climbing to the top of the Billboard 100 thanks mainly to streams rather than traditional ‘sales’.

Billboard reports that West’s seventh studio album earned the equivalent of 94,000 album units last week, meaning that it has toppled Chris Stapleton’s Traveller from the number one spot.

Only 28,000 of those units were physical albums, meaning that over 70% of the total came from streaming services including Spotify and Apple Music as well as Tidal and West’s personal website.

Kanye West's Yeezy Season 3 launch

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The rapper’s success is thought to be due to his unconventional style of release, finally making it to the top of the charts two months after its initial release.

West’s album was first released back in February during his Madison Square Garden launch event and was then made available exclusively on Tidal.

Despite his claims that The Life of Pablo would only ever be available on Tidal, West decided to later roll it out on rival streaming services.

Back in February, he tweeted: “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal.”

But it seems that the musician is pleased with his chart success, taking to Twitter again this week.

“Thank you to everybody who made The Life of Pablo the number 1 album in the world!!!,” he wrote.

“I also wanted to point out that it’s the first album to go number 1 off of streaming!!!”

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