Drake dropped a new mixtape – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late – by surprise earlier this week. Unsurprisingly, it’s proving quite popular. How popular? 23.6 million streams on Spotify in the US alone, according to the streaming service.
The company released the numbers this afternoon, noting that they’ve come in four days since the album went live. That’s already a long way ahead of Spotify US’ previous record holder for debut-week album streams: Drake! His Nothing Was The Same album notched up 15.8 million streams on Spotify US after its release in 2013.
More figures? Spotify says the new album was streamed 6.8 million times in the US on Saturday alone, more than doubling the previous record for one-day album streams.
But another stat shows Drake is still a much bigger star in the US than elsewhere in the world: those 23.6 million streams so far this week are 76% of the new album’s global total of 31 million streams on Spotify.
Sums? Spotify’s average payout to rightsholders of between $0.006 and $0.0084 suggest that If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late has earned between $186k and $260k from the streaming service globally, in its first four days. Note: that’s payments to his label and publishers, not to Drake himself – whose cut of the income is unknown.
The other part of this puzzle, of course, is actual sales of the new album. Billboard predicted a few days ago that it would sell more than 500,000 copies in its first week in the US.
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