In 1980, Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks” was the first rap single to go gold, indicating that it sold at least 500,000 units. And Drake stands to benefit most.įrom nearly the beginning, hip-hop was a commercial force. Hip-hop never left, but now it’s back at the top of the (streaming) charts. Today, though, platforms like Spotify and Apple Music allow all that digital consumption that’s been going on for two decades to finally be measured and monetized. The genre reached its platinum-album peak in the late ’90s (with the shiny suits to match), but was decimated by the rise of piracy in the 2000s. Hip-hop has been the creative nerve center of the music industry for a long time Drake is leading the charge in making it the commercial center again as well. “It’s almost like all of this growth that was coming into streaming, when Drake’s album came out, they all went over there.” “I looked at the growth of the industry between Views and More Life, and the growth of the industry really did kind of reflect the growth of Drake,” says Bakula. If Drake continues to drop annual releases that ride the streaming explosion to new commercial heights, he will be the most successful rapper of all time by the end of the decade. What matters is that Drake is far and away the most popular artist on streaming platforms, and streaming is the future of the music industry. More Life may not ultimately sell more than Views, which managed to move 1.6 million units in physical sales and digital downloads last year. “You don’t see a lot of artists that really stay right at the top of their game for as long as he has.” “It’s unbelievable the amount of volume that he gets, and it just keeps growing,” says Dave Bakula, Nielsen Music’s senior vice president for industry insights. If it continues outpacing Views, the project will exceed 3 billion streams this year. It’s already “sold” 1.4 million copies stateside, mostly through streams (the record industry equates 1,500 on-demand streams with an album sale). In the week ending April 27, More Life was streamed 97 million times in the United States. Then it reached a billion streams even faster than Views did. I was wrong: More Life, Drake’s playlist/compilation/cabana soundtrack, set a new streaming record when it debuted in March. I thought Views was the beginning of the end for Aubrey Graham, a commercial apex coupled with a creative decline. Zane Lowe and Beats 1 Are Trying to Turn Apple Music Into Netflix Who among us has even seen a Drake CD in the wild? But all those digital streams on Spotify and Apple Music added up every embarrassingly earnest “Marvins Room” session, every mildly curious reassessment of “Best I Ever Had,” every drunken screeching of “Fake Love” brought us to this unthinkable moment. Drake, who is petty enough to argue with his mother over a tuna sandwich, is empirically better than your fave by the metrics celebrated in our capitalist society. Drake, who has a giant creepy tattoo of his uncle (or possibly Sonny Bono) on his back, has somehow sold more than his two forebears - Kanye West and Lil Wayne - combined. How did it come to this? Drake, who once rapped, “Got so many chains they call me Chaining Tatum,” has reached the commercial pinnacle of the last great American musical genre. And Drake is the best-selling rapper of all time. Rapid job automation has doubled the unemployment rate. The Antarctic ice shelf is on the verge of disintegration. Our On-Demand Week stories grapple with how this shift came to be - and what it means for the future of tech, culture, and how we access both.

Consumers have both adjusted to the streaming era and dictated how businesses operate in its wake.

This week, The Ringer explores how the “on demand” model has changed the way we consume TV, film, food, products, and, well, almost everything.

Drake thank me later album sales