CHART STORY: DRAKE'S
STINGING TOTAL

It’s official. Drake has scored 749k total while stomping to #1 on this week’s HITS Top 50 Chart with YMCMB/Republic set Scorpion.

Drizzy's big number includes some 770m total U.S. streams, shattering the previous first-week record (Post Malone's 431m for beerbongs & bentleys), not to mention first-week Spotify, first-week Apple Music and first-week yadayadayada. As we noted previously, he also nabbed the #1 spot on the U.K. chart and took the record for first-week streams in Blighty as well.

The next-biggest bow belongs to Republic labelmate Florence + The Machine, whose High As Hope appears at #2 with 81k. With Malone right behind at #3, Republic has all of the Top 3 titles on this week's chart. Monte Lipman finds that to be a fun fact.

As for the remaining key debuts, Gorillaz’s The Now Now (Parlophone) rounds out the Top 5 with 61k, and Bullet for My Valentine’s Gravity (Spinefarm) can be found at #20 with 22k.

222/Interscope’s Maroon 5, meanwhile, returns to the Top 15, pulling in more than 25k for November release Red Pill Blues. Current single, “Girls Like You,” featuring Cardi B, holds in the Song Revenue Chart Top 5 this week, and it’s gone #10-8 on the Streaming Songs Chart. At press time, the hit was also #2 at iTunes.

When it comes to marketshare, UMG is #1 with 77%, WMG follows with 16% and SME is #3 with 5%, while the indies claim 2%.

Streeting this week are albums by August Day’s A Flock of Seagulls, Polydor’s Years & Years and Locomotion/Geffen’s YUNGBLUD. There’s also a new mixtape from Freebandz/Epic’s Future called BEASTMODE 2, which is only available for streaming.

In other news, it's 105 degrees in Hollywood on National Fried Chicken Day and we feel like fried chicken, by which we mean we know how fried chicken feels.