POST MALONE:
PRINCE OF STREAMS (UPDATE)

Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding (Republic) became available for preorder last week ahead of its 9/6 drop, revealing that smash singles “Wow.,” “Sunflower” and “Goodbyes” would appear on the album. That trio of streaming monsters, along with new hit “Circles,” which is #1 at Spotify U.S., #3 at Apple Music U.S. and #1 Most Added at Pop, will give the album—Post’s third in three years—an RTD of over 1m going into its opening week. Post also dropped the video for "Circles" on 9/3; check it out below.

Starting 2019 off cycle by Malone’s standards, meant releasing the second- and fourth-biggest songs of the year: “Sunflower” f/Swae Lee trails only “Old Town Road” in activity to date while “Wow.,” a Christmas gift to fans (which ended up going #1 at Pop radio), sits behind Ariana Grande’s “7 rings.”

Born and raised in the streaming era, Post has become a champion in the new marketplace. In an era where most artists are grateful to impact the chart in their debut week, Malone has set the new standard for an album’s life and redefined the long tail. Stoney, his 2016 debut album, is still cracking the HITS Top 50 every week; his sophomore LP, 2018’s beerbongs & bentleys, lives in the top 20.

With both albums still very much alive and streaming, Posty has amassed nearly 12b streams as an artist in the U.S. alone. Stoney is over 4m in activity to date (ATD) as beerbongs approaches 5m. Spotify currently has him ranked as sixth in the world, but we’re betting in a few weeks he’ll move up into the top three, as streamers have some time to sit with Hollywood’s Bleeding.

The only artist ahead of Malone on Spotify’s 2018 year-end Global list was Drake. The second biggest album on the platform for 2018 after Scorpion? None other than beerbongs & bentleys. The album debuted with 470k on the HITS Top 50 last year, and followed up with a second week total of 192k. What’s more, beerbongs’ debut week also broke the record for most single-week streams (440m), and now sits at #3 for streaming weeks, following Drake and Lil Wayne.

Post’s latest single, “Goodbyes” f/Young Thug, is already north of 1m in activity in its seventh week out. While the track hasn’t yet demonstrated the scorching power of “Wow.” or “Rockstar,” one thing is clear: Post Malone is an album artist, and his fans stream his projects―new and old―relentlessly. The debut week of Hollywood’s Bleeding will likely overtake the biggest streaming week of the year—and all three of his albums will chart in the Top 40.

After which, we expect, the Bud Light will flow like wine.