Drake's "VIEWS" Reaches 1 Billion Streams

Released at the end of April, Drake’s “VIEWS” has now been streamed over a billion times.

Streaming numbers can be confusing, and they seem less convincing than traditional album sales. However, a billion streams ain’t nothing to scoff at. If one’s project reaches the billy mark, he or she is in rare company. The latest album to attain 1 billion streams is Drake‘s VIEWS, which is currently spending its fourth consecutive week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. A couple of days ago, it was reported that Drake is, so far, the most streamed artist of 2016. It’s now clear that VIEWS basically helped him reach the top of that list by itself.

According to Billboard, VIEWS has achieved 1.07 billion streams in the US alone. The recent total streams report, released by HDD, anointed Drake with 1.44 billion total streams thus far into 2016. Therefore, about three-quarters of his total streams this year have come from VIEWS.

VIEWS isn’t the only Drake album to get to the billion mark. Last year’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late did as well, though its 1.06 billion streams have already been surpassed by the numbers of VIEWS. With 1.31 billion and 1.38 billion streams respectively, The Weeknd‘s Beauty Behind the Madness, released this past August, and Justin Bieber‘s November album Purpose have both recorded more streams than VIEWS,. Considering that VIEWS has been out for little over a month, though, expect Drake to surpass his Canadian competitors in no time. This past week alone, VIEWS was streamed over 160 million times.