Via Gary Suarez for Forbes
With Drake fans anxiously awaiting the arrival of his new album Views, the announcement of its official track listing via the artist’s Twitter account brought that anticipation to a fever pitch.
With the album due to premiere today via Apple’s Beats 1 program, it will assuredly exist as an Apple Music / iTunes exclusive for at least some period of time. Such was this case with last year’s Future collaboration What A Time To Be Alive, which stayed on the company’s proprietary streaming and download services for a full week before spreading to Spotify, Amazon, and other platforms.
Regardless of platform exclusivity or pricing decisions, the Views track list reveals a shrewd release strategy that guarantees it will be one of his most successful albums to date.
This past February, the Recording Industry Association of America announced changes to the methodology behind gold, platinum, multi-platinum, and diamond award certifications for albums. The new rules give streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify a significant role in the determination of an album’s sales performance, with 1,500 on-demand song streams in the United States holding the same value as 10 individual track sales or 1 full album sale. (Streams and sales that occur outside of the United States are not factored into RIAA certification.) The benefits for rap albums came swiftly, with artists like Big Sean, Kendrick Lamar, and Nicki Minaj earning fresh certifications in the first two weeks.
For an artist like Drake, for whom a new song release can generate millions of streams per day, the revised RIAA model assures him that Views will quickly achieve a platinum plaque. Using the RIAA’s model, 1,500,000 streams of an individual Drake song in the United States is the equivalent of 1,000 actual album sales. At 20 tracks long, that adds up to some potentially huge numbers for Views that would not have been factored into the award certification math prior to this year.
Views‘ tracklisting truly games the revised RIAA gold and platinum system by exploiting how the organization now factors in the streaming performance of pre-release songs following an album’s release. On just Spotify alone, recently released singles “One Dance” and “Pop Style” have amassed 67 million and 18 million global plays, respectively. Upon Views‘ release, any of those plays that occurred in the United States will apply not only to those songs’ qualifications towards RIAA digital single certifications, but towards the album certification as well. By the RIAA’s new methodology, that amounts to potentially tens of thousands of applicable and attributable sales the second Views drops, though notably it won’t factor into its placement on Billboard’s album charts.
Furthermore, the inclusion of 2015 single “Hotline Bling” as a bonus track could send Views‘ RIAA numbers skyrocketing. With well over 400 million Spotify streams worldwide and close to 700 million official YouTube plays globally on Drake’s Vevo channel, this aging hit could be the infusion that sends Views well on its way to multi-platinum status before year’s end.
The Views track listing is as follows:
1. Keep the Family Close
2. 9
3. U With Me?
4. Feel No Ways
5. Hype
6. Weston Road Flows
7. Redemption
8. With You ft. PARTYNEXTDOOR
9. Faithful ft. Pimp C & dvsn
10. Still Here
11. Controlla
12. One Dance ft. Wizkid and Kyla
13. Grammys ft. Future
14. Childs Play
15. Pop Style
16. Too Good ft. Rihanna
17. Summers Over Interlude
18. Fire & Desire
19. Views
20. Hotline Bling
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