Everybody knew to expect big things from J. Cole the moment he announced that he would be releasing his latest album, K.O.D., last Friday, and he did not disappoint. It was reported on Saturday that the title track off K.O.D. has already broken Spotify's opening day record for streaming, but Cole was destined for greater things than that, and he's proved it today.
It was announced today that Cole's entire K.O.D. album has broken first day streaming records, not just on Spotify but, according to The Verge, on Apple Music as well. In one fell swoop, J. Cole went from announcing an album the week before it dropped to dominating the two most popular music streaming platforms out there.
While it's quite an accomplishment, it shouldn't be all that surprising. J. Cole has always managed to maintain an incredible amount of star power and popularity while staying very low-key, and surprise albums always drive people ballistic.
Spotify made a tweet congratulating Cole on his accomplishment, and to give a nod to a classic J. Cole talking point. The tweet reads, "36,656,086 streams. 0 guest features."
That's quite a number, but that doesn't even come close to Cole's Apple Music numbers, as Apple told The Verge that K.O.D. was streamed a whopping 64.5 million times during its first 24-hours. Overall, that's equivalent to almost a third of the entire U.S. population that listening to Cole's album within the first day of its release.
Cole beat the previous Apple Music record holder, Drake's Views, by nearly a million streams.