Drake Breaks Single-Week Streaming Record With 'Scorpion'

Drake’s newest album “Scorpion” permeated pop culture discussion when it came out at the end of June. The 25-track opus apparently racked up streaming numbers alongside all the discourse around it, shattering the single-week streaming record for a new album across multiple services.

According to Billboard’s sources, “Scorpion” became the first album to ever cross one billion streams globally across all services in one week. Drake’s latest release launched on June 29. Between that day and July 5, it soared past the previous record-holder for single week streams, Post Malone’s album “Beerbongs & Bentleys.”

More than 750 million of those streams came from the United States alone. It was Drake’s eighth consecutive No. 1 release, according to Billboard’s metrics. That puts him in an exclusive club that includes Kanye West and Eminem, all of whom matched that streak.

“Scorpion” would have been huge regardless of any promotion, given Drake’s massive popularity over the past decade. But major music streaming service Spotify somewhat controversially pushed the album on its users, including those who paid to get rid of advertisements. For several days after its release, Drake could not be avoided by anyone using Spotify to listen to music.

The “Scorpion SZN” promotion even prompted some users to ask Spotify for refunds, as they felt they were being fed advertisements they paid to erase.

On-demand streaming is now how most people listen to music, with that form of consumption rowing significantly each year while traditional album sales drop. To account for the sea-change in music consumption, Billboard will start putting more weight on paid streaming subscriptions when assembling its Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts.

Artists traditionally have not made much money per stream on services like Spotify, but a copyright board ruled earlier this year that songwriter rates should go up by more than 50 percent over the next five years.