XXXTentacion: Sad off Question Mark album: The late Controversial rapper XXXTentacion has seen strong sales of his second album? Following his death in June, the total album-equivalent consumption: 1,068,000. Album sales: 285,000.Digital songs: 986,000. Streaming on-demand audio: 1,027,226,000 (YouTube/1035 TheBeat) QUESTION MARK debuted at number one in over 100 countries on the iTunes albums charts and the Billboard 200
We know it’s July already but it’s never too late nor too early to do a feature on the first half of the 2018 calendar year bringing our top 4 full-length albums among other tons of album that have been released for your listening pleasure so far. We do not have to wait until December to spotlight bodies of work put together across board: US, Europe, Asia etc. Yeah! But today, we are literally branching out (other than spotlighting just one artist on our AOTW segment) to make you to groove, vibe, jam to our 4 top digital sales, on-demand streaming, most trending/most trended, most talked about US albums while we hit you up with each of these albums individual hit track(s) with selections and positioning based on buzz around the albums. We got a list of US most popular artists of 2018 so far to choose from, ranked by total album-equivalent consumption. OMG! It’s so much to pick from Linx! It’s about 50 already
Of course, this is just six months and half or just a few more days to wrap up July but been tons of album release over and above US music scene already. 2018 has got the most anticipated series of albums just like the preceding years in music already. Although some are of the opinion that the album release schedule for 2018 got off to a relatively slow start before picking up in US. Whether slow or not, the good thing is we have a number of albums by American artists to appreciate so far in 2018 even hard to choose what albums to represent your favorites without being biased. We definitely are not talking about EPs guys!
To touch on EP, LPs and the likes, it’s interesting 2018 has welcomed back returning favorites with plenty of unexpected hits/diss tracks in between: Cardi B with invasion of privacy, Migos not hanging on on the previous success -Culture II the album, Pusha-T came through with her diss/album…pushing Drizzy to own up to having I love my mama, my baby mahbed, Janelle Monáe coming with her first solo release in more than four years as well as other exciting US newer music acts who are def here to stay.
Keen! Can we just move on already! Talking body of works/albums released by American acts this year. Yeah! We’ve had Eminem with Revival in January, In February Migos with Culture II as well as Kendrick Lamar ‘s Black Panther: The Album Soundtrack dovetailing to March, Cardi BInvasion of Privacy in April, KOD by J. Cole in May, Kanye West hit hard with his Ye in June, The Carters -Love is Everything, Drake’s Scorpion among others
“Apeshit (Everything Is Love) released as the album’s lead single on June 16, 2018 along with its accompanying music video, which was directed by Ricky Saiz and filmed at the Louvre in Paris in May 2018.
Everything Is Love: a collaborative studio album by American singer Beyoncé and rapper Jay-Z, credited jointly as the Carters. Unveiled at the final London performance of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s On the Run II Tour, it was released with no prior announcement or promotion on June 16, 2018, by Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment and Jay-Z’s S.C Enterprises, distributed through Sony Music Entertainment and Roc Nation respectively.The album features additional vocals by Quavo and Offset of Migos, Ty Dolla Sign and Pharrell, among others. The duo self-produced the album with a variety of collaborators, including Cool & Dre, Boi-1da and Pharrell.
Commercially, Everything Is Love debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with 123,000 album-equivalent units, out of which 70,000 were pure album sales, thus becoming Beyoncé’s first studio album not to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, and Jay-Z’s first album to miss the top spot since The Best of Both Worlds (2002). The album debuted on the chart after less than six full days of activity on Tidal, and four days of activity on all other digital retailers and streaming services. It dropped to number four in its second week, moving 59,000 album-equivalent units.
“Psycho” by Post Malone: off “Beerbongs & Bentleys album released in April, beating out the original soundtrack for the film “The Greatest Showman
Total album-equivalent consumption: 2,624,000. Album sales: 324,000. Digital songs: 2,030,000. Streaming on-demand audio: 3,145,868,000
Post Malone’s single “Psycho” off “Beerbongs & Bentleys album released in April, beating out the original soundtrack for the film “The Greatest Showman”
God’s Plan” (Scorpion): Drake’s Billboard No. 1 single “God’s Plan” led all songs in on-demand streaming and total album-equivalent consumption being more than (2m) 2,474,000 selling over (70k): 71,000 making digital song songs of over 1M (1,999,000) with streaming on-demand audio of over 3B (3,304,426,000)
With the second half of the year right ahead, let’s see what albums will make subsequent best-selling and of course songs of 2018 to wrap up the year. With these so far, the rest of 2018 seems promising as we look toward more hits to shape our playlists. Until then, Drake and Post Malone seem to be in a league of their own in popular music this year, according to this mid-year report on the music industry taking the top spots on our ranking of 2018’s most popular artists by total album-equivalent consumption from album/ music sales, streaming figures, and digital downloads.
