Drake Crushes Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon’s One-Day Streaming Records
By Jem Aswad
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – UPDATED: In its first day of release, Drake’s “Scorpion” shattered Spotify’s one-day global record for album streams, according to data on SpotifyCharts.com . According to those figures, the album’s individual track totaled 132,450,203 streams, more than 50,000,000 greater than the previous record, set just weeks ago by Post Malone’s “Beerbongs & Bentleys,” which was streamed 78,744,748 times globally on its first day of release.
A rep for Apple Music confirmed that the album shattered its single-day record as well, with more than 170 million streams. ’s 2017 mixtape “More Life” held the previous record, with 89.9 million streams on its first day.
Late Sunday, a rep for Amazon confirmed that that “Scorpion” had more first-day streams than any other album on Amazon Music Unlimited, breaking a record previously held by Justin Timberlake’s “Man of the Woods.”
Reps for all three services did not immediately provide further details. A rep for confirmed that the record had been broken by a large measure, but did not confirm the numbers officially, noting that its SpotifyCharts page may not be fully accurate. The numbers on that site at press time were slightly different than the ones first reported by Music Business Worldwide early Saturday. Variety will report the official numbers when they are released.
If the album’s streaming numbers were to continue at this rate — which seems unlikely — it would easily top 1 billion streams in its first week, obliterating the previous record. That mark was also set by “Beerbongs & Bentleys” last month, with 236,500,546 streams in the U.S. and 411,816,710 globally in its first week. Guess whose record that last number broke? Drake ’s, for last year’s 22-track mixtape “More Life,” which set the record with 385 million streams.
On other services, “ 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 Apple Music (with XXXTentacion’s “SAD!” at No. 26). Amazon and Tidal had not posted numbers at press time.
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.
Stats will be updated through the coming hours and days.
