Drake's Scorpion shatters global records with 1 billion streams

Jul 11, 2018 06:00 am

Canadian rapper Drake, 31 hattered records with his new album Scorpion, which is the first to score one billion streams in its first week. It also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album charts.

Drake's record company, Republic Records, said the musician, who was the biggest seller in 2016, is the first artist to reach one billion plus streams globally across all platforms in one week of release. The previous record of almost 700 million streams was set in May by Post Malone's beerbongs & bentleys.

According to data from Nielsen Music, the 25-track double album Scorpion sold 731,000 units in the US for the week, making the soul-baring record the biggest seller of 2018 by far.

It also gave Drake seven songs in the top 10 Billboard Hot 100 singles charts, led by Nice For What. That beat a record of five simultaneous songs by The Beatles in 1964 when the British band was at the height of its fame. - REUTERS