The conspiracy theory that Sabrina Carpenter robbed Travis Scott of a No. 1 Billboard album chart debut just got even more contentious. Moreover, for those unaware, these artists had one of the closest sales races in recent memory, with Sabrina's Short N' Sweet beating our Travis' re-released DAYS BEFORE RODEO by just about 1,000 units as of September 3's final results. But a new Vulture article claims that the publication reportedly received a very interesting alleged letter sent from Scott's label Cactus Jack to Billboard and Luminate, which is the company that tracks Billboard's weekly chart data. In it, Cactus Jack accused them of a "unreliable and incomplete" data tracking process that legitimately cost their artist a chart-topping debut.
However, the Cactus Jack brand claimed that they are "not reaching out as management for an upset artist" but rather as representatives of Travis Scott's label and store. This is all a bit complicated and alleged, but we'll try to sum up the gist of it under the unconfirmed assumption that this is what the supposed letter contains. Basically, Cactus Jack learned that "about 1,000 units" of DBR that came out as new digital deluxe editions on August 29 (the last tracking day) at 11:20 EST would not be reported this week, but rather in the next tracking week due to a delay. The label reportedly didn't take issue with this since they were in the lead as of Saturday, August 31 by about 11,000 copies. But Carpenter took the lead by Sunday through independent retail sales.
Travis Scott & Sabrina Carpenter Sales Battle Is Still Under Scrutiny
Furthermore, the letter from Travis Scott's label accuses Luminate and Billboard of weighting Sabrina's indie record sales more heavily than regular album sales. According to them, this contrasted the decision to stop that particular weighting practice at the start of 2024 to ensure more accuracy. "It clearly bumped Sabrina’s final number of units just above Travis by almost the exact amount of units we erroneously ‘lost’ that would have counted toward week 1," the letter reportedly reads. These units "comprised 1,291 actual units verified to have timestamps between 11:45–11:59pm" according to the letter. Cactus Jack claims that they tried to speak to Luminate about this before September 3.
Another alleged element is that this same situation happened to Travis Scott's UTOPIA last year, but that they were able to count it that time around. As such, there's a bit of a contentious discrepancy here according to the letter. Finally, the most scandalous claim from this letter is the accusation that the Luminate employee that Cactus Jack and Single tried to resolve this unit issue with is a former employee of Sabrina Carpenter's label, Island Records. They think that this employee had a biased reason for Carpenter to get the No. 1 spot, and thus ignored or erroneously downplayed these numbers. The letter ends by asking Luminate "to give one final consideration" to this debacle. "We are confident that our numbers are correct in accordance with our processes and methodology," a Luminate spokesperson reportedly expressed regarding this letter.
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