There’s little question that Justin Bieber’s surprise-release of “Swag,” his first album in four years, on July 10 was one of the biggest bombshells of the year in the music world, and its huge first-week numbers reflect that. It was the biggest streaming debut in Bieber’s 15-year recording career, with 200 million — a massive number and a 30% increase over his smash previous album, “Justice” — and on Monday, Billboard reported that a whopping 16 songs of the album’s 21 tracks charted in the Hot 100.
This is doubly impressive because it’s not the kind of blockbuster pop album we’ve come to expect from one of the world’s biggest superstars at all. Reflecting his massive (and well-documented) life changes over the past five years, it’s a reset in every way, an intentionally loose set of songs that still contain strong hooks, and show his voice to be as supple and soulful as ever. It’s also created a clean slate from which he can go in any musical direction he chooses.
Yet the main headline about the album has been the fact it debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, behind the Travis Scott-helmed “Jackboys 2” collection. That album isn’t the kind of blockbuster we’ve come to expect from one of the world’s biggest superstars either: It’s more of a posse album featuring a few solo songs by Scott along with collaborations with and solo tracks by Don Toliver, Sheck Wes, and others, and features from Playboi Carti, Future, Tyla, Glorilla and more.
But as Chris Willman wrote in Variety’s chart report on Sunday, “it feels like those chart results should come with asterisks and footnotes attached,” because when you dig in, it’s one of the closest contests we’ve seen in years, not because of the final numbers, which aren’t close at all — Scott’s project came in with 232,000 equivalent-album units, while Bieber had 163,000 — but what the numbers inside those totals mean. Here’s why.
(Note: This comparison is not intended to dispute the final results or criticize the criteria used by Billboard and its data partner Luminate — both companies, and Variety, are owned Penske Media Corporation — but merely to illustrate how differently the albums reached the top two chart positions.)
Broadly speaking, the album charts are based on a combination of streaming activity and physical sales (vinyl, CDs, downloads) — with many deeply complicated rules about how much certain factors are weighted, and how many streams equal one physical sale: “Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA),” per Billboard. “Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.”
That’s about as simple as those rules get, but the upshot is that it takes many thousands of streams to equal one physical album sale, largely because those sales generates significantly more money for artists, labels, publishers, songwriters and other involved parties.
On the other hand, each stream generates approximately $.003 to be divided between those parties; a streaming subscription averages around $10-12 per month for access to literally millions of songs, with royalty payments based on the percentage of those billions of total streams that an artist or song can claim, which is usually almost literally a drop in a vast ocean (which is why so many artists complain so bitterly about their miniscule income from streaming). Physical sales generate much more revenue for the involved parties because a consumer is paying much more for only that album or song, and thus the royalties are only distributed to the involved parties. Those royalties can be robust: On Scott’s website, prices for “Jackboys 2” range from $7.99 for a download to $75 for the most deluxe edition.
And that’s where the differences are most drastic: Bieber’s album topped the Luminate streaming charts by a large margin (as well as both the Spotify and Apple Music album charts) with nearly 200 million paid streams, but because it was a surprise release, no lucrative vinyl or CD editions are available yet — just lower-priced downloads, which comprised only 6,000 of the album’s 163,000 equivalent album units. The “Swag” vinyl and CDs will not be available for months; expect the album to receive a big chart bump when they are.
On the other hand, “Jackboys 2” was just No. 4 in streaming, with around 95 million, but it was No. 1 in physical by a large margin, with 160,000 physical sales out of its 232,000 equivalent units.
Which number matters more? Obviously, it takes millions of streams to equal the amount of money generated by a single physical sale. But because streaming is the way most people consume music, it’s arguably a much more significant measure of mass popularity (or at least mass curiosity).
But Scott’s physical sales show just how dedicated his fans are: They spent from $7.99 to dozens or even hundreds of dollars on the 23 different versions of “Jackboys 2” that are available on Scott’s website — or were available, since eight of the limited-edition versions have already sold out — on an album they could easily stream. That shows an enviable level of commitment, and the commitment of such “superfans” is the main thing the record industry is betting on for new revenue as the financial boom of the initial streaming revolution slows down.
Indeed, record labels and artists have leaned deeply into fans’ deep thirst for physical product: Scott’s album is available in a head-spinning array of separate vinyl, CD and digital releases with different covers, along with $75 “packs” that combine the music releases with t-shirts, hoodies or hats.
Bieber’s fans are just as dedicated, and his chart numbers might have crushed Scott’s if he’d had more physical product available. But then again, even though “Swag” is the first album in four years from one of the music world’s biggest stars, it was a surprise release, so there was no big promotional campaign to drum up excitement and sales (although the surprise is arguably just as effective at generating excitement).
By comparison, “Jackboys 2,” announced and available for pre-order since March, isn’t even a full-scale Scott release: It’s a compilation with a couple of new songs from one of the world’s biggest stars, as opposed to a full-scale New Travis Scott Album. Also, it arrived just under two years after the release of Scott’s most-recent full-scale album, 2023’s “Utopia,” which was followed by a major tour, and he’s been featured on many other artists’ songs.
Complicating matters even more is the fact that the numbers for “Jackboys 2” would have been even bigger if it had gone on sale on the standard release-day of a Friday (in this case, July 10), like Bieber’s album and most others, but instead it came out on Sunday the 12th, so only five days of consumption were measured for the week.
So when you weigh in all of those variables — and others we haven’t even thought of — whose album is bigger?
We’re gonna play it safe and say: Neither.