Drake Destroys Streaming Records

Before the internet gave us streaming music on laptops, tablets and mobile devices, the standard for judging the success of a musical single or album was based on the number of units sold. While artists still want to hit Gold, Platinum or Diamond certification thresholds, they are more concerned with their stream numbers.

Earlier this week, Drake’s More Life, which is technically a “playlist” but is, for arguments sake, his fifth studio album, was released on March 18^th. It was described by The Ringer’s Justin Charity as Drake’s “biggest, most ambitious project in years” and that project then went on to break records on two of the internet’s biggest streaming services, Apple Music and Spotify.

Drake breaks Apple Music’s (89.9m) and Spotify’s (61.3m) one day streaming record with “More Life” ?? pic.twitter.com/8ZR6AT3Vbl

— WORLDSTARHIPHOP (@WORLDSTAR) March 20, 2017

Drake racked up 89.9 million streams on Apple Music, not including listeners during the OVO Radio debut of the album on Beats 1, and he also picked up 61.3 million streams on Spotify. Both of those figures break the previous streaming records held by Ed Sheeran. Songs from Drake’s new album also hold 22 spots on Spotify’s Top 100 Songs chart, which is the most for any artist since early 2015.

More Life wasn’t just streamed millions of times; it was also met with rave reviews and tons of internet fanfare. Producer Scott Vener more or less live Tweeted his first listen on Saturday and we agreed on a few different points, this GOAT meme of Kanye West and Drake in the studio making “Glow” is life and “Northwestern Kid” continued to get beat into the ground.

After VIEWS, the Canadian’s fourth studio album, tried to be a few different things that Drake clearly isn’t, Drake came true with More Life. The numbers prove just that.