Drake's New Album 'Views' Sells One Million Copies in Five Days Under Apple Exclusivity

Although Drake's newest album "Views" was only available on iTunes and Apple Music for one week, under the terms of the company's exclusivity deal with the artist, the album managed to sell more than one million copies in just five days, which The Wall Street Journal calls "a rare achievement in an age of rapid streaming growth and declining sales of downloads and CDs."

Most of those sales numbers -- 632,000 copies to be exact -- came within the first 24 hours of release, with the rest trickling over the one million mark in the subsequent days. The figures specifically target sales for the $13.99 iTunes copy of Views, but Apple Music showed some impressive streaming statistics for Drake's new album, as well.

In total, Views was streamed more than 250 million times worldwide, 200 million of which were inside the United States, suggesting Apple Music managed to get some of the artist's fans to sign up for the service beyond its current 13 million paid subscribers.

drake

The results fly in the face of industry fears that paid streaming services might hasten the continuing decline of music sales, which have fallen by more than 60% in the past 15 years, according to data from Nielsen. While that could still eventually happen, plenty of fans purchased the $13.99 Drake album last week even though they could also access it immediately, along with some 30 million other tracks, by subscribing to Apple Music for $9.99 a month—or even just by signing up for a free trial.

As Drake's album launched on April 29, his record label’s parent company, Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, went to work keeping any traces of pirated songs and videos off of sites like YouTube. According to sources within the industry, the new trend of exclusivity deals between artists and streaming services like Apple Music and Tidal, has led to a renewed crackdown on pirated music. Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group alone has spent "millions of dollars a year" going through a similar process with other big releases.

Drake has been one of the headline artists representing Apple Music since it was first announced last year at WWDC. Since then, the singer has hosted 20 episodes of his own Beats 1 Radio show, OVO Sound, partnered with Apple Music to sponsor his Summer Sixteen tour, and had some of his songs featured in ads for the streaming music service.

Tags: Apple Music Guide, Drake

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

Jsameds

40 months ago

Music is so incredibly bad now-a-days, people are happy with scraps.

^^ Every generation says this about the generation before.

Rating: 15 Votes

69Mustang

40 months ago

^^ Every generation says this about the generation before.

This is so true. Little known fact: Cave paintings in Chauvet and Lascaux depict Paleolithic people complaining that Mesolithic music lacks the soul of the stuff they listened to as kids. Too much bass.:D

Rating: 3 Votes

2010mini

40 months ago

Good news for Apple. Shows people are still interested in purchasing music.

Rating: 2 Votes

newyorksole

40 months ago

He deserves it. It's a good album. Took a couple listens for me to really like it.

Rating: 2 Votes

ChrisA

40 months ago

^^ Every generation says this about the generation before.

Not true. I teach in a high school and you can not believe the number of kids who have tee-shirts of bands from the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Lots of Beatles and Pink Floyd t-***** on any given day. I've never seen a kid with an Adel t-shirt.

Todays generation is looking back to the bater days of music that their parents know. and are listening to the current stuff too.

The reason we think the old music was better is because we can "cherry pick" the past. We only remember the one in 100 best bands and tracks and forget the junk.

Politicians do this to. They say "make America great again" but really what was it like back then? In the 50's women had a choice of getting married or living on poverty (the pay was much more un-even back then) and black people had to ride in the back of the bus or worse and they were drafting his and sending them to Vietnam to die by the tens of thousands and "for what purpose?" Not many people want to go back to those days except for the few good things they remember. Same with music most of the crud on the radio was just crud that we forgot about.

Rating: 2 Votes

Jsameds

40 months ago

Back when rock music was made with actual rocks ha

Rating: 2 Votes

TechZeke

40 months ago

Agreed. But this time we're right.

You know, there is a lot of good music out there made today that aren't made by the big name artists like drake.

The reason we think the old music was better is because we can "cherry pick" the past. We only remember the one in 100 best bands and tracks and forget the junk.

Politicians do this to. They say "make America great again" but really what was it like back then? In the 50's women had a choice of getting married or living on poverty (the pay was much more un-even back then) and black people had to ride in the back of the bus or worse and they were drafting his and sending them to Vietnam to die by the tens of thousands and "for what purpose?" Not many people want to go back to those days except for the few good things they remember. Same with music most of the crud on the radio was just crud that we forgot about.

Exactly. If you are only basing modern music based off hearing Sorry by Justin Bieber on the radio, then you are ignoring all the great modern artist that are not well as known. There are great albums released all the time iTunes, but the older generation isn't exploring the new music section of iTunes to see all the great modern music that has come out, but don't hit top charts on KIIS FM.

P.S., there is no pay gap between men and women today. Its a debunked myth that when you take into account field, experience, education, hours worked, etc the "gap" disappears.

Rating: 1 Votes

akadafni

40 months ago

You know, there is a lot of good music out there made today that aren't made by the big name artists like drake.

Exactly. If you are only basing modern music based off hearing Sorry by Justin Bieber on the radio, then you are ignoring all the great modern artist that are not well as known. There are great albums released all the time iTunes, but the older generation isn't exploring the new music section of iTunes to see all the great modern music that has come out, but don't hit top charts on KIIS FM.

P.S., there is no pay gap between men and women today. Its a debunked myth that when you take into account field, experience, education, hours worked, etc the "gap" disappears.

Agreed. There is a lot of great modern music today. You just have to look for it. And it's not always on the radio. My Shazam app lets me discover new music if I'm watching tv, at the movies. Soundtracks are a great discovery tool because they include a bit of everything. That's how I discovered Glass Animals. Their song was on the Taken 3 soundtrack. I shazammed it at the movies (don't judge me). I don't rely on iTunes to discover new music, but I do rely on iTunes to buy music. When an artist says they like another artist I will check out the other artist to see if I like them as well. Sometimes checking out the iTunes Store for other country's is a good research tool as well. There are gems out there people.

Rating: 1 Votes

MH01

40 months ago

This album had 1M sales. At $13.99/copy, that means the company got paid $9.8M, after Apple's cut. And they spent "millions" cracking down on piracy.

So the main reason music costs so much is because they want to invest so much money on keeping people from getting it for free.

If nobody pirated, how much less would they be able to charge?

Also, I find it hard to imagine anybody would bother pirating if they would just offer the album on Spotify which has a free tier.

Albums used to cost a LOT more before piracy, via torrenting etc. One could argue that piracy led to prices dropping to compete.

The current pricing has nothing to do with piracy, it's greed. If you believe that prices would go down if people could not get it for free, you are mistaken. They would go up, as you would have no option and the label would make up BS excuses why it's costs so much.

Rating: 1 Votes