Chris Brown, on Tuesday, dropped his new Album of 45 songs.
This Album when played song by song is 3 hours long.
Brown dropped “Heartbreak on a Full Moon” on the morning of Halloween and it features collaborations with Usher, R.Kelly, Gucci Mane, Kodak Black, Young Thug, Lil Yachty, Yo Gotti and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie.
This is Chris Brown’s first Album since “Royalty” in 2015.
His fans never let him down since as of Tuesday morning, “Heartbreak on a Full Moon” was the No. 1 album on iTunes.
Brown wants his 45-track record, which came out Tuesday, to shoot up in the charts and that’s the way it’s done.
To fully get this calculus, it’s important to first understand how the charts are calculated.
Before the Internet charts were simply based on physical record sales. But now fans download albums or individual songs off iTunes or pay a monthly fee and stream music from Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Tidal or a number of other services.
In 2014, Billboard decided to factor in streaming songs when determining its list of the top 200 records each week, the Billboard 200. It created a simple formula and a few easy guidelines:
- The digital sale of 10 songs from an album counts as one sale of that album.
- Every 1,500 streams of songs from an album count as one sale of that album.
The system isn’t perfect, as it makes it easier for longer records to pop up the charts.
If all 10 tracks of a 10-track album are purchased, then that counts as an album sale. But, for example, if every track on a 20-song album is purchased, that counts as two album sales.
And if an album with 10 songs is streamed by 150 people, then it counts as a sale of the album. But if an album with 15 songs is streamed by 100 people, that also counts as a sale of the album.
More importantly, the songs don’t need to be streamed as part of the actual album. Instead, they can be individually added to playlists, and each stream still counts toward the album itself.
This has created a potential incentive for artists to produce longer records, which has recently become a trend — particularly in hip-hop and R&B, the most streamed genres, according to Nielsen reports.
Some recent examples:
Drake’s “More Life” ran for 22 tracks, while his album “Views” had 20. Ty Dolla $ign’s “Beach House 3″ contains 20, and BIG K.R.I.T.’s “4eva Is a Mighty Long Time” has 22. Lil Yachty’s “Teenage Emotions” ran for 21 tracks, while Lil B’s “Black Ken” clocks in at 27. Future released two records in a week with a total of 36 songs between them.