How Digital Album Sales Are Affecting the Race for No. 1 on the Charts

Travis Scott was fired up. “IM FCKING JUMPING THRU WALLS,” he wrote on Instagram. The reason: He planned to officially re-release Days Before Rodeo, his decade-old pre-stardom mixtape, on streaming services on August 23. 

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. Instead, Carpenter’s release squeaked out a No. 1 finish, earning 362,000 units to Scott’s 361,000. 

Short n’ Sweet out-streamed the rapper’s old mixtape by a wide margin, racking up 233 million official on-demand streams to Scott’s 40.6 million. But remarkably, he sold 300,000 digital downloads of Days Before Rodeo, according to Luminate. On the final day of the tracking week, Scott put out six different digital variations of his album — each of which included at least two extra tracks and cost just $4.99, the minimum price for chart eligibility — as part of a ferocious last-ditch attempt to snatch victory from Carpenter. She responded in kind, serving up three $4.99 digital variants of her own and ultimately selling 45,000 digital downloads. (All nine variants were available exclusively on the artists’ web stores.) 

This tactic has been around for years: Release digital variants near the end of the week; sell them cheap; polish off a rival; tout the accomplishment. The technique is getting more attention lately because clashes between titans are being decided by digital variant release strategies. Scott was nearly able to erase Carpenter’s mile-wide streaming lead thanks in part to his blitz of variants. And these duels have spurred the latest round of music industry conversations about whether artists and labels are trying to game the charts — or take advantage of their most devoted followers.

“People are keeping that ammo in the chamber: ‘Let’s save these four variants that we know we’re going to have to drop at different times throughout this week,’” says one major-label A&R who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Does it enhance the fan experience, or does it actually lessen it? I think it’s manipulative.”

When asked about this practice, another prominent manager would say only that “it’s ironic that the institution which is allowing the problem to exist is reaching out for a quote.” (“Billboard is always reviewing, in consultation with Luminate and the industry at large, what sales channels are included for chart eligibility, and has updated its policies when necessary based on market behavior,” Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard‘s executive vp of charts and data partnerships, said in a statement.) 

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. 

And the contest between Carpenter and Scott was a nail-biter until the end, as both camps released their final variant in the last two hours of the tracking week. Since January 2020, there have only been seven weeks when the gap between Nos. 1 and 2 was less than 1,000 units. (Representatives for Carpenter and Scott did not respond to requests for comment.) 

Despite the prominence of digital albums in some recent release campaigns, digital album sales have plummeted from 103.3 million in 2015 to 18.3 million in 2023, according to Luminate’s annual reports. Within this category, Luminate also tracks an “others” grouping that reflects sales from artists’ direct-to-consumer web stores along with non-major digital retailers. So far this year, sales in “others” total just 1.7 million, which amounts to 0.23% of year-to-date total album consumption (730.45 million equivalent album units*).

While this represents a tiny sliver of overall activity, it can make a difference in close chart races. Swift released additional digital variants when she went head to head with Eilish and against Ye and Ty Dolla $ign‘s Vultures 2 in August. (Eilish and Ye and Ty released their own as well, to no avail.) And Blink-182 used a digital variant of One More Time as part of a successful effort to scrape by Drake‘s For All the Dogs and nab No. 1 in October. 

These face-offs also demonstrate how far labels and artists are willing to go to try to get that top spot. Getting a No. 1 demonstrates that labels “still have the ability to move the needle,” says industry veteran Ray Daniels. “That is a big reason why certain artists will go to certain labels.” And “ego is a lot of it,” adds Joey Arbagey, a former major-label A&R executive. 

Most prominent artists want to top the chart as well, though they may be loath to admit it. “It’s a way of an artist on the rise saying they have arrived,” Daniels says. And scoring a No. 1 can then serve as a springboard, creating “a domino effect of other opportunities, whether that’s working with brands or getting significant press,” according to Nick Groff, an artist manager and former A&R. 

In more recent years, artists and labels have used hyper-aggressive price discounting, bundling albums with tickets or merchandise, box sets, vinyl variants and other techniques to try to jack up an album’s chart position. (There are dissenters: “It’s crazy how much time and energy is wasted on shit like this,” says one former major label executive, practically eye-rolling through the phone, “instead of focusing on signing good artists and making good music.”) When chart rules change, so do the industry’s strategies for impacting them. 

Some of these options disappeared in 2020 after Billboard stopped counting albums sold in merchandise bundles and ticket bundle offers. Label executives say selling digital variant downloads is one of the few maneuvers they have left to goose numbers late in a chart week. The other is putting a deluxe version of the album with additional tracks on streaming services, also an increasingly common tactic.

But adding an unreleased track or two onto the album and selling it exclusively through an artist’s web store is a more potent option. This can also be done quickly and at the last minute, as a Hail Mary when a chart race suddenly becomes competitive. Acts usually make these releases available for a limited time only, which both further juices fan interest and underscores that the artists are focusing on the all-important release 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. Some artists don’t even include a new song in a digital variant; they just change up the artwork, or digitally “sign” the album art.

“If there is exclusive music available in these variant releases, that can be a great strategy and a fun way to engage with your fan base,” says Greg Hirschhorn, founder of the distribution company Too Lost. “If there is only a change in the track list or a different album artwork, I feel like the only real goal or outcome is chart manipulation.”

Steeply discounted digital variants also threaten to snub the diehards who ordered an album ahead of time at full price. If a fan pays $9.99 for a pre-order on iTunes, they may feel like a sucker when they see the same album augmented with bonus material and made available for just $4.99 near the end of the tracking week. “It feels like people should wait until Thursday afternoon to buy the album” and get the best deal, the major-label A&R says.

But for now, any potential fan backlash to the rise of variants appears to be outweighed by their impact on the charts. “When you’re in it and you’re fighting so hard for No. 1, it can seem obnoxious [to people outside the industry], but that’s the only thing that matters,”Arbagey says. “They’re pulling out all the stops.”

“I’ve definitely been in one of those heated races,” Groff adds. “You figure out everything you can possibly do to boost the numbers.”

*Through the week ending Aug. 29, total U.S. album consumption in 2024, as represented by equivalent album units — excluding units caused by user generated content — equals 730.45 million, according to Luminate. Each equivalent album unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.

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