The highest-selling albums and EPs in the United States are ranked in the Billboard 200, which is published by Billboard magazine. The data are compiled by Nielsen Soundscan based on each album's weekly physical and digital sales, as well as on-demand streaming and digital sales of its individual tracks. In 2016, a total of 33 albums claimed the top position of the chart. One of which, English singer Adele's 25 started its peak issue dated December 12, 2015. [1]
Canadian rapper Drake's fourth studio album, Views , became the second best-selling overall album with 1.04 million equivalent album units, selling 852,000 copies in its first week of release, and achieving over 245 million streams, more than previous record 115.2 million by Beyoncé's Lemonade . [2] [3] Lemonade is the third overall best-seller, incurring 485,000 copies in its first week (653,000 with additional album-equivalent units). [4]
† | Indicates best performing album of 2016 [5] |
The Billboard 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by Billboard magazine to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Sometimes, a recording act is remembered for its "number ones" that outperformed all other albums during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 list in May 1967, acquiring its existing name in March 1992. Its previous names include the Billboard Top LPs (1961–1972), Billboard Top LPs & Tape (1972–1984), Billboard Top 200 Albums (1984–1985) and Billboard Top Pop Albums (1985–1992).
American singer and songwriter Beyoncé has released eight studio albums, five live albums, three compilation albums, five EPs, one soundtrack album, and two karaoke albums. To date, Beyoncé has sold over 200 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Billboard ranked her as the 37th greatest artist of all time.
Top Album Sales is a music chart published by Billboard magazine starting in May 1991, and has existed in its current form since December 2014. It is a weekly chart documenting the best-selling albums on a weekly basis in the United States. Up until December 2014, this had been documented by the Billboard 200 chart, but that chart was altered to factor in music streaming by accounting for album-equivalent units in its tallies to document the effect of the rise of music streaming outlet such as Apple Music and Spotify. Starting in the Top Album Sales chart's debut week of May 25, 1991, Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from Soundscan, now known as Luminate. During the week of December 6, 2014, the chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. The Top Album Sales chart was created to preserve the older methodology of counting pure album sales.