Today’s thread is brought to you by the numbers 5, 8 and 2007.
Surprisingly, “One Dance” becomes Drake’s first number one as a lead artist. Drake of course has topped as a featured artist (most recently on “Work” for 9 weeks) and come close (“Hotline Bling” went to number 2). He did it with 160K in downloads, 87M AI and 37.4M in streams. Drake also breaks a record recently set by his fellow Canadian, Justin Bieber. Bieber got 19 tracks to chart at the same time on the Hot 100 – Drake got 20. That is based almost entirely on streaming because most of those tracks aren’t even available for sale unbundled from the album. I have a little problem with that. You should at least be able to buy them.
Desiigner’s (yes, spellcheck, take it up with musical world) “Panda” slides to 2nd after two weeks and Lukas Graham needs to be satisfied with “7 Years” never hitting number one as it holds at 3 (it did spend a second week at the top of the radio songs chart). Mike Posner’s re-mix of “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” hits a new hight at number 4, Rihanna’s “Work” featuring Drake is 6th, Chainsmoker’s “Don’t Let Me Down” featuring Daya is 7th, Calvin Harris’s “This is What You Came For” featuring Rihanna is 9th (giving Rihanna her 28th Hot 100 top 10) and Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” rebounds to 10th.
Fifth Harmony becomes the first female group since 2007 to reach the top 5 on the Hot 100 (seriously?). The last female group to do so was the Dixie Chicks with “Not Ready to Make Nice”. The Dixie Chicks actually tweeted Fifth Harmony to congratulate them. “Work from Home” is 5th. Zayn’s “Pillowtalk” is 8th. He also released the video for his new single today “Like I Would”. For those 80s children – think “Tron”.
Is Justin Timberlake headed to number one next week? “Can’t Fight the Feeling” has sold 250K downloads since Friday and could move as many as 325K this week. It is also all over Spotify and expect a lot of radio adds this week. Bopping around the channels this weekend stuck in traffic, I heard it on the local Pop, HAC and AC stations.
Live Nation is releasing a $20 “Kickoff to Summer” ticket promotion for 1,000 shows and 150 artists. Check it out. Live Nation’s concert revenue was up $238M (5%) in 2015 and their overall revenue was up $500M (11%). This was due to more concerts in NA, growth in Asia and Australia and festival acquisitions. I wonder how many of those $20 tickets will end up on the re-sale market. The UK is investigating the secondary market.
On the Voice front, Adam leads the charge with a top 10 bonus. Can Laith make it as well?
9 Adam Wakefield “Love Has No Pride”
11 Laith Al-Saadi “We’ve Got Tonight”
13 Mary Sarah “My Church”
19 Hannah Huston “Say You Love Me”
21 Bryan Bautista “1+1”
27 Alisan Porter “Cryin'”
37 Shalyah Fearing “A Change is Gonna Come”
80 Paxton Ingram “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”
115 Nik Hagelin “Hold On, We’re Going Home”
