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What is going on over there at Billboard?!
DJ Khaled claims he was cheated out of having the #1 album in the country, and he plans on taking Billboard to court over their chart results. Billboard and Khaled allegedly had a deal, they agreed that downloads from Khaled’s energy drink bundle would count towards his sales numbers. The bundle sold over 100,000 units. But then, Billboard retracted the agreement, disqualifying all of the sales from the promotion, claiming that there were “anomalies” in his numbers.
On May 30th, Tyler, the Creator’s album, IGOR, was named #1 on the Billboard 200 with 165,000 albums sold. Khaled’s “Father of Ashad” came in second place with 137,000 sold.
This led to Khaled’s lawyers sending a letter to Silvio Pietroluongo, SVP of charts and data development at Billboard. A source close to DJ Khaled told the Page Six, “When Khaled’s team tried to appeal, Billboard refused to budge. The situation got worse when Khaled’s team noticed that Tyler, the Creator’s bundle deal counted towards his sales.
According to the Times, Tyler and Khaled’s albums had almost the same number of streams. The validity of their bundles is what broke the tie.
Desiree Perez, chief operating officer at Roc Nation, stated that the idea and practice of bundles is “confusing and demeaning to art.” She continued, “We’re obviously not fans of bundling, nor should anyone who cares about artists making music. But our hands are being forced by Billboard’s desperate, last-ditch effort to keep streaming from eliminating what’s left of music downloads.”
According to Complex, Billboard examined both artists’ packages for discrepancies. Both offered with merchandise, but Khaled’s album was also offered with sales of energy drinks. That was the factor that had Billboard raising its eyebrows, largely due to obvious attempts at encouraging bulk purchases. It was reported that a blog post by e-commerce site Shop.com told its members to buy 12 packages to “push DJ Khaled and Market America to No. 1!”
Nicki Minaj was another person who had similar issues with bundles and Billboard, calling them and Travis Scott out on her Apple radio, Queen Radio, show earlier this year.
Source: Karen Civil