Drake’s ‘Scorpion’ on Its Way to Shattering Streaming Records

By Jem Aswad

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – UPDATED: Sixteen hours after its release, Drake’s new 25-song double-album “Scorpion” is averaging 10 million streams per hour on Spotify, according to an announcement from the company, and looks well on its way toward breaking a number of streaming records — it might even become the first album to pass 1 billion streams in the U.S. in its first week of release.

Even if it doesn’t, “” seems guaranteed to break the records set just weeks ago by Post Malone’s “Beerbongs & Bentleys,” which was streamed 47,930,039 times in the U.S. and 78,744,748 times globally on its first day of release — and 236,500,546 times in the U.S. and 411,816,710 globally in its first week. Guess whose record that last number broke? ’s, for last year’s 22-track mixtape “More Life,” which set the record with 385 million streams.

“Scorpion” became the No. 1 album on the Apple Music charts in 92 countries almost instantly upon release, and at presstime its 25 songs occupy the top 25 spots on (with XXXTentacion’s “SAD!” at No. 26).

The labels involved (Republic, Cash Money and Young Money) seemingly have launched a full-scale campaign to break as many streaming records as possible, something that the album’s length makes a lot more likely than, say a seven-track album. In an unexpected move, given Drake’s long history with Apple Music, they’ve also gone big with Spotify, teaming up with the service for its first-ever global dedicated artist takeover, called “ScorpionSZN,” whereby Drake takes over multiple playlists on the same day. The MC is on the cover of RapCaviar, Beast Mode, Today’s Top Hits, Morning Commute and others — including ones where his music isn’t even featured.

Late Friday afternoon, the RIAA announced that Drake has become its top certified digital singles artist, with 142 million to date — a number that’s sure to grow in the coming days.

Amazon and Tidal had not posted numbers at press time. Stats will be updated through the coming hours and days.

More to come…