The cabs rides on Lyft and the concert bundles worked: Justin Bieber sold 620,000 copies of “Purpose” last week and finished at number 1. Of the total 116K were streams. He should buy a canoe.
One Direction didn’t do too badly either: with little promotion they sold 470,000 total. Only about 50,000 were streams.
Bieber’s fans certainly hit the stream button enough times. Did they take get a lot of free cab rides from Lyft? We’ll have to ask. Many of them are too young to drive, so maybe it worked.
Both Bieber and 1D were knocked off their perches last night by Adele. All of the tracks from her “25” album are selling individually enough that they occupy a third of singles on iTunes in the top 30 right now. The album is number 1.
Bieber’s label, DefJam, run by the gregarious and popular Steve Bartels, had three of the top four selling albums last week, and one more at number 10. DefJam also figures into the soon to be released Rihanna album “Anti,” which looks like it will go through Samsung and maybe stay off charts a la Jay Z’s last record, “Holy Grail.” Rihanna’s record is coming in December, hoping to penetrate Adele’s fortress at number 1. Good luck with that.
