And on day seven, Kanye West got the hang of it. As much as Jesus Is King, the album in which Kanye West asks you to change Instagram for the church, it is a somewhat extravagant album, things could not have gone better for the Chicago rapper in the first week of life of the project. Absolutely all the eleven songs with which Kanye West has built the 27 minutes of his gospel album have slipped into the Billboard Hot 100, reference classification of the music industry in the United States regarding individual cuts.
How does billboard hot 100 work?
Kanye West aka bbusinessman AAA+: at Postposmo we are sure that nothing has influenced this marketing fortune to have headlines about Kim Kardashian, porn and sex blowing up Google precisely the same week it was put up for sale Jesus is King.
Regarding the disc classification, Jesus is King has risen to the first position of the Billboard 200 (where it appears as the soundtrack of the film of the same name). With this milestone, Kanye West manages to emulate the feat of Eminem, who also managed to place nine albums at number one on the best sellers (all of his discography except the first, The Slim Shady LP). Because this is what the Billboard chart measures, right? Sales, right? Well yes and no.
Today the magic formula of Billboard obeys a 'secret' algorithm that takes into account radio broadcasting and streaming reproductions.
On the Billboard list they send Youtube & Co.
It's clear that Kanye West hasn't sold all of his songs on Singles, as it was done not too long ago. With the advent of the Internet age, the newspaper, magazine, movie, and of course the recording industry, were forced to change everything as long as everything changes as little as possible.
Today they send YouTube, Spotify, Tidal and Apple music. If we look at what Billboard has to say about his cooking methods, we discover that record sales have long since ceased to be calculated as, literally, record sales.
Clicks vs. stream vs physical CD sales
Billboard has spent seven years racking its brains to balance the scale of musical clicks. The latest most innovative measure, taken two years ago, gave greater weight to streams of songs made on payment platforms (and not standard Youtube, for example). It is not known for sure how many clicks equal how many "disk equivalent units". It is known that the streamings offered with advertising have more weight and that, more or less, the sale of a complete album is equivalent to 1.500 reproductions of Spotify or YouTube. But what about the radio?
One of the biggest controversies at the moment in the United States (and, logically, in the rest of the markets) is that of the purchase of minutes of radio broadcasting by record companies, which makes the new form of measurement almost a pay-to-win.
The last great controversy came this year from the hand of DJ Khaled. Billboard discounted some 100.000 sales of his new album after considering that the sale of Father of Ashad next to a batch of energy drinks (which made the album more of a secondary gift) disobeyed the most basic accounting premises of the list of best-selling albums.
Dj Khaled and his «mysterious music»
DJ Khaled decided to put a spin on the already common practice among Taylor Swifts and Katy Perries of giving away the album with the purchase of a concert ticket. Jealous for being overtaken by Tyler the Creator on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (both released album the same week), DJ Khaled raged in an Instagram video where he denounced that there was a certain "mysterious music that nobody listens to" taking over the sales list. After the tantrum, DJ Khaled deleted the video from his account.
The last artist to break Billboard records was another rapper: Lil Nas X. His song Old town road, along with Billy Ray Cyrus, It has been the one that has been at number one on the Hot 100 Billboard the longest. with a total of 19 weeks at the top. In this respect, Kanye West's songs are far from emulating anything like it. the cut of Jesus is King best placed in the table is Follow God, in seventh place. follow him Closed on Sunday, in 17th place, and Selah in the 19.