This isn’t a Cardi B. vs. Nicki Minaj post. I’m just leading off with Invasion of Privacy because it’s the most recent high-profile example of a single folding into album sales. I don’t believe in pitting female artists against each other in a way that men are never compared. There are 3,000 mumble rappers on the radio and another handful of Doodleface KoolAidHair Rappers that I can’t tell apart, yet we keep acting like there isn’t space for Nicki and Cardi to be great at the same time. Just wanted to put that upfront.
Before Cardi B. even finished her debut album, it had already gone gold. She could’ve released 10 tracks of silence and Invasion of Privacy still would’ve had a Gold Certification from the RIAA upon release because of “Bodak Yellow.”
Congratulations are in order for Cardi B, whose debut album, Invasion of Privacy, dropped minutes ago and is already eligible for a Gold certification.
The Bronx-born rapper can attribute this figure to the massive success of her debut Atlantic Records single, “Bodak Yellow,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 last September and is certified 5x Multi-Platinum (5 million units) by the RIAA. As Chart Data recently noted, 10 track units equal one album sale, which means Invasion of Privacy has moved 500,000 units on the strength of “Bodak Yellow” alone, enough to earn a Gold certification.
In the age of digital music, it helps to have a single that massive as a prelude to your album because those streams and downloads eventually count toward your album’s streams and downloads, and in turn, toward your album’s sales. Back in the day, we bought singles from the store. That was the end of that purchase. The album came out a couple of months later, and we bought that too — with the lead single somewhere in the track listing — but those were two separate purchases. Now, you can pull up an entire album, listen to one song on loop all day, and those streams count toward the album’s total streams. Listening to a 10-track album straight through is the same as streaming one of those songs 10 times. The same goes for downloads. If you and ten of your friends download one single, y’all just bought an album.
Nicki Minaj released Queen last week and whether you love it or not, I think it’s hard to ignore that there are at least some really great spots on the album…but it’s too long. Very long albums with 26 tracks (including interludes) would pop up from time to time when I first started buying CDs in the 90s, but most artists get in and get out. Here’s 45-53 minutes of music over 11 to 13 tracks, and we’re done. Queen is an example of the current trend of artists releasing overly long albums (whose quality could benefit from a lot more editing) in the digital age to capitalize on album equivalent units.
Drake released Scorpion and it has 25 tracks. It doesn’t need 25 tracks. Only 8 tracks are memorable. But having 25 tracks means streaming it through once is already double the number of streams for a shorter album. Plus, the more tracks you release, the higher chance that someone will latch on to one of those songs and put it on loop.
Artists have less of an incentive to really buckle down and find the cream of the crop for the final track listing because consumers don’t have to listen to albums straight through anymore. Do y’all remember cassettes? If you hated a song, you had to fast forward…play to check your spot…fast forward…play to check your spot…rewind a little because you overshot…and then start the song you like. Now, you don’t even have to download that song or keep that song in the album’s playlist. Making an album in 1988 meant you had to be 100% in love with everything you put there as an artistic statement. You had to really stand behind every track because every consumer had to listen to every track and you wanted to make sure every track was a fair representation of what you wanted to say on the album. In 2018, if you have 12 tracks you love, there’s really no harm in putting out the other 13 that would’ve been left on the cutting room floor. In fact, it benefits you because who knows which of those songs will connect with enough people to give your album another sales boost through selective streaming and downloading. A stream is a stream. A download is a download. Even if the vast majority of people think it’s crap, the people who don’t think so are still contributing to your sales.
But the most cynical way to pad your sales is to take a big single, sometimes with another artist, and tack it on to your album.
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