The Weeknd sets new global record for first-week streams

The Weeknd has smashed a few streaming records with the November 25 release of his third album Starboy.

Estimates are he has broken the old global record for first-week streams of 223 million by clicking over 400 million (according to Fader) on all audio streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal.

The Weeknd is also juicing up on Spotify alone.

Drake might be the most streamed artist of 2016 on Spotify with 4.7 billion streams. But fellow Toronto native The Weeknd has overtaken him in terms of monthly listens. Drake is just under 36 million listeners a month. The Weeknd is now on 36.068 million – and adding 580,000 listeners a day.

Starboy also set a new Spotify one-day record, racking up 40 million streams in the first 24 hours. The previous record was held by David Bowie with 36 million.

Given that Spotify estimates its average payment to rights holders is between $0.006 and $0.0084, The Weeknd is currently generating about US$250,000 a day on the service.

Using those figures, Drake’s One Dance must have generated $7 million to date. Earlier this week, it was just 30 million plays away from becoming the first track to hit 1 billion spins on Spotify.

Starboy went on to debut at #1 on the US Billboard charts, kicking up first week sales of 348,000 equivalent album units. 209,000 of these were in traditional album sales.

It is the third largest debut for 2016, behind Drake’s Views (1.04 million units) and Beyoncé’s Lemonade (653,000)

“I think it’ll be the best-sounding album I’ve ever done,” The Weeknd told VMan magazine. “It’s hard to label the sound because, when I first came out, nobody would label it R&B. I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.”

Other top Spotify monthly acts include The Chainsmokers (35.1m), Sia (30.5m), Major Lazer (28.8m), Calvin Harris (28.4m) and Maroon 5 (28.2m).