Justin Bieber sets new streaming record, lands 6th US #1

While Justin Bieber’s fourth album Purpose debuted at #1 on the ARIA chart this week – his third chart-topping album in Australia – it is setting new milestones around the world.

The Canadian landed his sixth US album chart topper, beating One Direction’s Made In The A.M. In the meantime, Sorry jumped up a spot to #3 on the Hot 100 and a spot up to #2 on Digital Songs, the latter an 18% rise to 153,000 units.

Purpose has broken two Spotify records for first week release – globally 205 million and 77 million in the US. It beat the 106 million global streams by Made In The A.M.

The Purpose set repeats the top debut achievements of Believe: Acoustic (2013), Believe (2012), Under The Mistletoe (2011) and Never Say Never: The Remixes (EP) (2011).

The Bieber album had the biggest first week sales for 2015, earning 649,000 equivalent album units (522,000 in pure album sales). It was the most impressive since Taylor Swift’s 1989 notched up 1.29 million for its first seven days last November, and the largest by a male artist since the 192,000 by Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2 in 2013.

In America the 21-year old also topped the Billboard Artist 100 chart, which is made up of artist activity across a number of major Billboard charts measuring album and track sales, radio airplay, streaming and social media fan interaction

Purpose received 2.8 million Twitter mentions last week, a surge of 85% from the week before.

Bieber was also one of the stand-outs of the Jennifer Lopez-hosted American Music Awards held in Los Angeles on November 22. He made it rain inside the Microsoft Theater.

He closed the show with a medley of an acoustic What Do You Mean?, the upbeat Where Are U Now and Sorry, during which the ceiling opened and water gushed down soaking the entire stage. It was quite a spectacle, and sets up his US tour set to begin in March and wind up at Madison Square Gardens in New York on July 19.