Adele No. 1 on Billboard Artist 100, Jordan Smith Hits Top 10
"25" & "Hello" keep Adele on top, while the new winner of "The Voice" vaults to No. 6, the best-ever rank for a finalist from the show.
Powered by to the continued success of album 25 and its lead single “Hello,” Adele is again the top musical act in the U.S., holding at No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100 chart (dated Jan. 2).
The Artist 100 measures artist activity across Billboard‘s most influential charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, Top Album Sales and the Social 50. The Artist 100 blends data measuring album and track sales, radio airplay, streaming and social media fan interaction to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity.
Adele leads the Artist 100 for a sixth total (and fourth consecutive) week with an 11 percent increase in overall activity. As previously reported, 25 tallies a fourth week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and Top Album Sales, earning 825,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Dec. 17 (up 13 percent), according to Nielsen Music; of that total, 790,000 were pure album sales (up 14 percent). Meanwhile, “Hello” tops the Hot 100 for an eighth week, the longest reign of her career (besting the seven-week command of 2011’s “Rolling in the Deep”).
In line with the previous week, album sales continue to mark Adele’s greatest metric on the Artist 100 (72 percent). Digital song sales follow at 15 percent.
Below Adele on the Artist 100, Justin Bieber, The Weeknd and Drake are steady at Nos. 2, 3 and 4, respectively, while Pentatonix rounds out the top five (6-5).
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Following the Dec. 15 coronation of Jordan Smith on the ninth-season finale of NBC’s The Voice, the singer soars into the Artist 100’s top 10 (14-6). He’s up by 59 percent in activity, with digital song sales accounting for 96 percent of his total; album sales make up the rest. Click here for a recap of Smith’s big sales week.
Smith is the third contestant from The Voice to reach the Artist 100’s top 10 (dating to the list’s July 2014 launch), and the highest-charting. Seventh-season runner-up Matt McAndrew hit No. 10 and eighth-season champ Sawyer Fredericks rose to No. 8.
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Meanwhile, Smith’s fellow ninth-season contestants Emily Ann Roberts (94-27), Jeffery Austin (86-66) and Barret Baber (who re-enters at No. 84) also make sales-fueled gains. (Next up for Smith: he’ll join American Authors, Nate Ruess and musicians from the Boston Pops as performers at the 2016 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic, the New Year’s Day outdoor hockey game between the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. NBC will air the festivities starting at 1 p.m. ET.)
Check out the entire Artist 100 here.