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How Digital Album Sales Are Affecting the Race for No. 1 on the Charts
No. 1 on the Billboard 200 was decided by fewer than 1,000 units between Sabrina Carpenter and Travis Scott. Digital album sales strategies are key.
Sabrina Carpenter ‘s Short n’ Sweet was slated to come out the same day, and before Scott’s announcement, it was expected to coast to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart — an inevitable coronation after a string of high-flying singles. On the other hand, some label executives believe that digital variants help create eye-catching first-week totals and race-to-the-finish-line dramas that are good for the music industry, sort of like its version of Barbenheimer: Before Taylor Swift’s showdown with Billie Eilish in May and Carpenter vs. Scott more recently, it had been a whopping eight years since two albums cracked the 300,000-unit mark during the same week. In many cases, this strategy is effectively a sale of a lone song masquerading as an album purchase — artists often just add one live track or unreleased loosie to the original project and make it available as a new variant.
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