AppleInsider Staff
Hip-hop icon Dr. Dre's much-awaited album "Compton: A Soundtrack" was streamed 25 million times during its first week of availability, driving nearly half a million paid downloads on iTunes over the same period.
Dre's record was released on Aug. 7 as a two-week Apple Music exclusive and is loosely tied to Straight Outta Compton, a movie chronicling the rise of legendary hip-hop group N.W.A. Apple executives revealed "Compton's" first week numbers to The New York Times in a statement on Sunday.
"We're beginning to show what we can do in terms of communicating music to a worldwide audience and helping artists at the same time," said Jimmy Iovine. Cofounders of Beats Music, Dre and Iovine were brought into the Apple family after their company was purchased for $3 billion last year.
The performance, while solid, was not overwhelming and paled in comparison to recent non-exclusive streaming releases also offered by competing services like Spotify. For example, Drake's "If You're Reading This It's Too Late" notched 48 million streams in one week when it dropped in February, while Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly" garnered almost 39 million, the report said. "Compton" is expected to sit in the No. 2 spot when Billboard's charts are published on Monday.
As an interesting side note, The Times believes Dre not only benefitted of Apple's vast marketing power, but also the company's penchant for secrecy, as "Compton" didn't leak online prior to official release. Dre was known to be working on a follow up to his 1999 album "2001," but specifics were closely guarded. In a recent episode of his Beats 1 show The Pharmacy, which also served as a platform for "Compton's" announcement, Dre revealed a previous version of the album was completely scrapped.
Marko Zivkovic
Mike Wuerthele
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
Chip Loder
65 Comments
$0.002 per stream * 25,000,000 albums * 12(?) songs per album = $600,000 for the content owner? Is that good or bad?
$0.002 per stream * 25,000,000 albums * 12(?) songs per album = $600,000 for the content owner? Is that good or bad?
Well, if I earned $600,000 in a week, I'd think that would be good. I guess it's all relative. And I suppose you also have to account for the fact that he earns that all up front and he's not going to earn $600,000 every single week (most likely, anyway).
[quote name="LighteningKid" url="/t/187740/dr-dres-compton-album-hits-25m-streams-on-apple-music-in-first-week#post_2761960"]Well, if I earned $600,000 in a week, I'd think that would be good. I guess it's all relative. And I suppose you also have to account for the fact that he earns that all up front and he's not going to earn $600,000 every single week (most likely, anyway). [/quote] I'm just curious if my assumed numbers are accurate and if that's good for its debut week.
[quote name="LighteningKid" url="/t/187740/dr-dres-compton-album-hits-25m-streams-on-apple-music-in-first-week#post_2761960"]Well, if I earned $600,000 in a week, I'd think that would be good. I guess it's all relative. And I suppose you also have to account for the fact that he earns that all up front and he's not going to earn $600,000 every single week (most likely, anyway). [/quote] Also don't forget those 500.000 downloads. 500.000 x $12? x 0,7? = $8 571 428 Combined, this potentially shows that much more people are listening to his music than prior to streaming. Which is a nice thing. But it also shows that buying is a much more powerful short term business model. It also shows that streaming is a business model that works for big time artists. I'd say it's a great launch. I could live my whole life from this amount of money ;-) Anyone who says the numbers are disappointing has lost contact with life.
Straight outta Compton! Crazy m......