Here Are the First-Week Sales Projections for Drake's 'Scorpion' (UPDATED)

Drake's 'Scorpion' has already broken a number of streaming records, and his first-week sales projections are no less impressive.

UPDATED 7/2/18 5:05 p.m. ET: It appears Drake's final first week tally for Scorpion will be quite less than initially projected. Billboard reports it will be around 700,000 equivalent album units, while Hits Daily Double projects the final number to be in the 725-775,000 range.

See below for original story published on 7/1/18.

Since Scorpion dropped on Friday, everyone and their mother has been listening to find out if Drake has a son (he does), if he dishes on Rihanna (“Summer Games”), and to simply enjoy the highly-anticipated follow up to his 2017 “playlist” More Life. As a result, Scorpion already broke a bunch of streaming records on Apple and Spotify, and the album’s first-week projections are looking bright.

There’s no question Drizzy’s album is going hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, but the numbers he’s pushing to secure the spot are impressive. According to Chart Data, Drake will move 870-920k equivalent album units, with 275-300k coming from pure album sales. The numbers are a slight decrease from the 1.04 million Views totaled in its first week. 

AsHipHop-N-More points out, Scorpion is one of the first albums to be influenced by Billboard’s new streaming rules. Under the new rules, paid subscriptions hold a bigger weight compared to free ones. It takes 1,250 streams of an album to equal one sale on paid subscriptions, while 3,750 streams will equal one sale on free streaming options, like Spotify's free tier or YouTube. 

For comparison's sake, and to be messy, Kanye West’s Ye moved 208,000 equivalent album units in its first week at No. 1, while Pusha-T’s DAYTONAdebuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 77,000. Of that total, 39,000 were in traditional album sales. 

Spotify revealed thatScorpion was being streamed over 10 million times per hour the day it dropped, and it shattered the record for the biggest opening day with an enormous 132 million streams. Scorpion also controlled the top 25 spots on Apple Music and reportedly sold about 30,000 units overnight. On Friday, Drake was also named the RIAA’s highest certified digital singles artist, having moved 142 million digital singles to date.

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