Chance the Rapper's 'Coloring Book' is First Streaming-Exclusive Album to Chart on Billboard 200
5/22/2016 by Keith Caulfield
Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book debuts in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart, becoming the first streaming-exclusive set to reach the list.
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The independently released album bowed exclusively through Apple Music’s streaming service on May 13 and launches at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 with 38,000 equivalent album units. Nearly all of those units were generated by streams of the albums tracks via Apple Music, equating to 57.3 million streams. (Each streaming equivalent album unit is equal to 1,500 streams from an album.)
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new June 4-dated chart (where Chance the Rapper debuts at No. 8) will be posted in full to Billboard’s websites on Tuesday, May 24.
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Coloring Book will remain exclusive to Apple Music until May 27, when it becomes available to other streaming services. There are no announced plans to release the album for sale.
It’s worth noting that while Coloring Book is the first album to chart on the list entirely from streams, Kanye West’s recently released The Life of Pablo’s units are almost entirely driven by streams. The album is currently in its seventh week on the list, at No. 20, and in the latest tracking week, 99.93 percent of its units (21,000) were generated by streams. The other .07 percent were album sales. The set sold a handful of copies in the latest tracking frame, and hasn’t sold more than 1,000 copies in a week since its second chart week.