Kanye West is very happy right now, so I don’t want to burst his bubble.
So: released on Friday, his mini album “Ye” with seven tracks should sell, stream, and download a total of 175,000 copies by Thursday night. That’s an ok number, not great. By comparison, Post Malone’s current album, “Beerbongs and Bentley’s” debuted with a total 461K (with 153K CDs-downloads). A better comparison would be The Weeknd’s “My Dear Melancholy,” also an EP, which sold comparably to Kanye.
Most of “Ye” sales will be from streaming. Right now, all seven tracks make up the top 7 on Apple Music. Five of the top 10 streaming tracks on Spotify come from the album.
On iTunes, just two of the tracks are in the top 50. But the whole album is number 1.
Hitsdailydouble figures that of the 175K, 70K will be from paid downloads. (There is no actual physical CD.) A few sales will come from Kanye transmitting them through ugly sneakers into the souls soles of those who feel slavery is a choice.
At $7.99, the whole album is a bargain, I guess. It’s only 23 minutes long, so you can get the point pretty fast. The best “Song” on the album is a construct of two old songs sampled plus what sounds like a John Legend vamp, and then a small combo of a newish rapper and Kid Cudi.
This is not “What’s Going On” or “Songs in the Key of Life.” But it can’t hurt you.
There’s no way to compare the sales of “Ye” with anything else, especially Kanye’s last album. “The Life of Pablo” had a botched release, twice, and never really went anywhere.
