Lady Gaga & Michael Buble Bound for Top 2 on Billboard 200 Chart

10/25/2016 by Keith Caulfield

James Devaney/GC Images

Lady Gaga leaves Tony Bennett Celebrates 90: The Best Is Yet To Come at Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 15, 2016 in New York City.

Lady Gaga’s Joanne is set to bow at No. 1 on next week’s Billboard 200 chart, according to industry prognosticators, while Michael Buble’s Nobody But Me should arrive in the runner-up slot.

Sources suggest that Joanne could earn around 180,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Oct. 27. That forecast has grown from its 140,000-unit estimate on Oct. 23. About 155,000 of Joanne’s first-week sum could be traditional album sales.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The top 10 of the new Nov. 12-dated Billboard 200 chart -- where Lady Gaga may bow at No. 1 -- is scheduled to be revealed on Billboard’s websites on Sunday, Oct. 30.

Gaga’s last solo album, 2013’s ARTPOP, launched at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 258,000 sold in its first week, according to Nielsen Music. She followed it up with her jazzy duets album with Tony Bennett in 2015, Cheek to Cheek, which opened at No. 1 with 135,000 sold.

As for Buble, his new effort could start at No. 2 with 85,000 units (about 80,000 of which could be traditional album sales). Comparably, his last album, 2013’s To Be Loved, debuted at No. 1 with 195,000 sold in its first week.

Other albums aiming to start high on next week’s Billboard 200 include Korn’s The Serenity of Suffering (55,000 units) and Pentatonix’s A Pentatonix Christmas (50,000 units).