In news that should surprise no one, Drake's latest album, VIEWS, has made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. There had been some different first-week sales projections floating around, and Drake himself preemptively reported that the album sold at least 1 million copies in a week. He was right. According to Nielsen Music, VIEWS achieved the equivalent of 1.04 million U.S. album sales in its first week, thus placing it well above Beyonce's Lemonade, which sold 321,000 units in its second week.
Traditional album sales reportedly accounted for 852,000 U.S. copies, and the album was streamed approximately 245.1 million times in the U.S. Those streaming numbers translate into the equivalent of 163,392 album units.
As VIEWS was only available via Apple platforms for its first week, the pure album sales come exclusively from iTunes purchases, and most of the streaming numbers are from Apple Music. A few of the album's singles -- "One Dance," "Pop Style," and "Hotline Bling" -- have been available on other streaming platforms, like Spotify, and those streams were also taken into account.
Now that its chart debut has been revealed, VIEWS is officially Drake's sixth consecutive No. 1 album. The only commercial release he's put out that didn't reach the top of the chart was his debut EP, 2009's So Far Gone. Going off Nielsen's numbers, VIEWS has given Drake the highest first-week sales of his career. The album has recorded the most first-week sales by a male artist since Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience, released in March 2013.
VIEWS was released on April 29, and it became available for physical release and digital purchase outside of iTunes on May 6. It will not be available on other streaming services until this upcoming Friday, May 13.