Drake’s More Life — which is heading for a big debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart next week — is off to a record-breaking start at Apple Music and Spotify.
More Life’s songs collected a whopping 89.9 million streams globally in the album’s first 24 hours of release on Apple Music. That’s a new single-day record for streams of songs from an album on Apple Music.
Further, Spotify reports that on More Life’s first full day of release, March 19 (following its bow in the early evening of March 18), it generated the best first-day streams for an album on the service: The set’s songs collected 61.3 million global streams. That beats the previous record holder, Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (Divide), which generated 56.7 million streams for its songs on March 3 (the day ÷ was released).
In addition, Drake set a new record for the most streams for an artist in a single day on Spotify: 76.4 million streams on March 19. Again, Drake beat Sheeran’s previous high-water mark: 68.7 million streams on March 3.
As earlier reported, More Life is on course for a No. 1 bow on the Billboard 200 chart with over 500,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 23. That would grant Drake the largest week for an album since his own Views debuted at No. 1 with 1.04 million units last May.
Drake’s More Life was released to all streaming and digital retail services on Saturday, March 18. Its streaming and commercial release was preceded that day by the project’s premiere on Drake’s OVO Sound radio program on Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio at 6:30 p.m. ET.
The album is slated for a commercial release on CD and vinyl LP in the coming weeks.