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Justin Bieber’s ‘Purpose’ Album Smashes Spotify’s First Week Streaming Record

By Page Mackinley
Published on: 23:02 PST, Nov 20, 2015

Justin Bieber’s Purpose currently sits atop the Top Albums chart, and will obviously debut at No. 1 on Billboard’s 200 Albums Chart when the latter publishes its rankings and results next week.

And there’s more good news for Bieber. According to Hits Daily Double and Billboard, Purpose smashed the previous global and U.S. records for most streams of an album in its first week of release on Spotify.

Purpose was streamed 205 million times globally, with 77 million of those streams coming from the U.S., beating out the record set by The Weeknd when he dropped Beauty Behind the Madness, which generated 90 million streams.

One Direction’s Made in the A.M. also surpassed The Weeknd’s record, with 106 million global streams. Both Bieber and One Direction’s album were released on November 13. As per Hits final report, Purpose landed the biggest sales debut of 2015 (pre you know who), with 508,111 sales units. With streaming and downloads that figure hikes up to 628,806 total consumption units for the week ending November 19.

Bieber’s singles are also doing the business. The island-flavored “Sorry” is currently No.l on Spotify, No. 2 on iTunes U.S. chart, No. 1 on iTunes U.K. chart and the Official Singles Top 40 Chart.

After Purpose took over No. 1 spots on iTunes charts around the world during the first week of its release — most of these slipped to No. 2 following Adele’s roll out of 25 — Bieber’s record debuted at No. 1 on national album charts in Australia, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.

It gets better for Bieber. “Sorry,” his second single from Purpose, dethroned Adele’s “Hello” from the top spot on the U.K.’s Official Singles Top 40 Chart, after he was blocked from No. 1 for three weeks. “Sorry” took the No. 1 position after racking up combined weekly sales of 104,000, including 5.35 million streams.

Bieber’s singles “Sorry,” “Love Yourself” and previous worldwide No. 1 smash “What Do You Mean?” placed first, third, and fifth, respectively on the U.K.’s Top 40 chart.

The only other artist who has done the same is John Lennon, posthumously, in 1981, with “Imagine,” “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” and “(Just Like) Starting Over,” a month after he was shot dead in New York City 34 years ago.

As of Friday, Bieber has eight top 40 entries (which includes the three top five’s) in the U.K. singles chart. The feat saw him set a new record as the first living artist to have that number of simultaneous entries. Back in 1957, Elvis Presley set a record when he had seven songs in the U.K. Top 40 chart.

In addition, every single track on Purpose has landed on the U.K’s Top 100 singles chart. The album has also gone silver (denoting over 60,000 sales) in the U.K. after just one week.

While Justin hits No. l on Hits Top Album Chart and will debut at No. 1 on Billboard’s 200 albums chart next week, he did not manage to stave off One Direction from taking the top spot on the U.K’s album chart with Made in the A.M.

The boy band’s achievement sees them take the title of fastest-selling album of the year. Their album sold 93,189 copies in its first week in the U.K., slaying the record previously held by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album, and outselling Bieber’s 90,000 by just over 3,000 copies.

With most critics reviews and a fair few celebrities, lauding Bieber’s Purpose, his soon-to-be-announced Billboard 200 albums crown, new Spotify records, various No. 1’s and high chart placements around the world, and records broken on the U.K. chart — this is a comeback of comebacks.

[Images via Getty Images]

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