The sales battle between Travis Scott and Sabrina Carpenter for a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 album chart is almost over... But it's even more contentious and nail-biting than before. Moreover, initial sales projections for DAYS BEFORE RODEO were once just around 215,000 units first-week. Now, though, they grew to 365,000 according to new social media reports, whereas Sabrina's Short N' Sweet sits at around 354,000. Of course, we don't know how this will actually end up. Maybe the singer ends up coming out on top in the end, as they've both heavily pushed deluxe versions, physical copies, and extra tracks to give them the edge over the other.
However, there are a lot of people that think these DBR sales for Travis Scott are very fishy, including Joe Budden. "Numbers all across the board everywhere else are down," he said on his podcast. "What YG do, 8,000? Everybody else is between 20 and 30,000. They're saying that Travis Scott is one of the first examples of the latest trend in music where the artists are signing directly to tech companies. The tech companies are offering different packages. I don't believe those numbers for a second."
Travis Scott's New DBR First Week Sales Projections
Furthermore, this gets into the debate around bundling, bonus tracks, and stream inflations that previous Travis Scott albums like ASTROWORLD have provoked. In fact, Billboard and other music industry metrics have changed their rules to account for discrepancies like these. The problem is that they keep going back and forth between allowing bundles and disqualifying them. Either way, at the end of the day, this is all for show. No one gave ASTROWORLD its massive success for its number one status, but rather for its quality.
Still, it's very understandable why these artists want that top spot, especially if they feel like they truly deserved it over another. But Travis Scott also has other issues and things to deal with, like his Miami arrest that just wrapped up legally. So maybe some folks see this sales battle as just engagement fodder or an irrelevant discussion. Nevertheless, we'll see what actually happened once the official numbers emerge.