Knilz

4y

crazy how a lot of highly populated countries are not in there

like do these people not listen to music or is there a different reason behind it?

edit: oh it's just the market of recorded music
out

thegreatdivine

4y

Not The Weeknd/Republic Records doing damage control This is how you know you've lost. Global appeal so undeniable he failed to debut above a B-list artist in the country where most of his fans are based

The Weeknd’s New ‘Dawn FM’ Tops Charts Around The World, Showing His ‘Undeniable Global Appeal’

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< 1/18/2022
By Andrew Unterberger

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The album topped 10 global country charts, according to his label, while landing at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with the potential to rise.

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The album, which follows as a companion piece of sorts to 2020’s blockbuster After Hours, bowed atop the Official U.K. Albums Chart — as well as, according to The Weeknd’s label, Republic Records, the official charts of Canada, Australia, Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. In addition, two of the set’s tracks made the top 10 of Billboard‘s Global 200 chart, tracking the biggest songs in the world each week — led by the No. 2 debut of “Sacrifice,” which accounts for a mighty 53.5 million global streams this week, according to MRC Data.

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The album has a lot of room to grow, too, as one of the year’s first superstar releases. While in the U.S., the album trailed Atlanta rapper Gunna‘s DS4Ever on the Billboard 200 albums chart, landing at No. 2 on the tally dated Jan. 22, The Weeknd still has CD and vinyl releases planned that could push the album up the charts if it sustains streaming interest. And, meanwhile, he’s preparing for his long-postponed After Hours ‘Til Dawn Stadium Tour that’s now due to kick off this summer with dates across across multiple continents and maintain fans’ interest in the album and mark one of the world’s biggest tours since concerts shut down in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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“The impact of Dawn FM speaks to The Weeknd’s undeniable global appeal and further reinforces the healing power of music,” says Monte Lipman, Republic Records founder and CEO, in a statement. “The non-traditional rollout represents Abel’s pure dedication to his fans by making new music available in real time. This body of work has captured the imagination of both the creative community and the overall marketplace.”

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Since his pop breakthrough in the mid-’10s, The Weeknd has been a steady presence at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. His three most recent albums before this year, 2015’s Beauty Behind the Madness, 2016’s Starboy and 2020’s After Hours, all debuted atop the listing — with After Hours marking arguably the biggest success of his career to date, earning 444,000 equivalent album units in its first week — as did his 2018 EP My Dear Melancholy. But Dawn FM was edged out by DS4Ever (which, like Dawn FM, was released on Jan. 7 and officially announced the Monday before) in a particularly close race: DS4Ever bowed at No. 1 with 150,300 equivalent album units, while Dawn FM finished just a couple thousand short of that with 148,000 units.

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While the initial performance for Dawn FM may seem modest compared to The Weeknd’s After Hours start, it requires some additional context. The first factor of importance is that After Hours‘ lofty first-week number, posted in April 2020, was boosted by a number of advantages that Dawn FM lacks. After Hours was released when Billboard still counted ticket- and merch-bundled album sales towards its totals — and The Weeknd offered both ticket bundles with CD purchases and merch bundles with digital purchases of After Hours, as well as a direct-to-consumer combination physical and digital album bundle, which could be reported as a sale that week even when the physical album would not ship for months to come. It all helped the album reach 274,000 in first-week sales, and over 100,000 in physical sales alone.

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None of that is available for Dawn FM. In addition to bundles having been disallowed from contributing towards chart totals in October 2020, Dawn FM has no physical release to speak of yet — something the singer-songwriter (born Abel Tesfaye) himself acknowledged on Twitter would hurt his first-week numbers. “This doesn’t matter to me,” Tesfaye posted, in a tweet that was later deleted. “what matters is getting to experience the album together with the fans during these times.”

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After Hours also benefited from a long and successful pre-release rollout — largely centered around the set’s two pre-release singles “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights,” which dropped within a couple days of one another the prior November, and which would both top the Hot 100 by the time After Hours itself debuted atop the Billboard 200. By contrast, the only song to be released in advance from Dawn FM — which was officially announced just days before the album’s Friday debut — was “Take My Breath,” which notched a solid Hot 100 debut at No. 6 the prior August, but failed to build much momentum from there and was not a major needle-mover by the time of Dawn‘s release five months later.

https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/the-weeknds-dawn-fm-top-charts-world-1235020035/

DirtyTrees

4y

China 1.4 billion and they only 7th damn

J2422

4y

You stay trolling all day

BLACK

4y

seek help

thegreatdivine

4y

The US is by far the biggest music market in the world so underperforming there is an automatic L. These are the top 10 biggest music markets globally:
1. United States
2. Japan
3. United Kingdom
4. Germany
5. France
6. South Korea
7. China
8. Canada
9. Australia
10. Netherlands

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_recorded_music_markets

RCLamp

4y

I don’t think anyone expects him to have a blinding lights tier hit again tbh. That’s like a once in a career type thing and a lot of luck is involved lol. I do believe though that with the right push and strategy that Sacrifice can easily become a hit later down the line.

Teki

4y

u livin in this thread and caring way too much
shows me that if somehow drake sold 150k and landed below #1 the way weeknd did, you probably wouldn't be as big of a fan

Y0rn

4y

Dam didnt know our trash is still 10th

DirtyTrees

4y

China 1.4 billion and they only 7th damn

thegreatdivine

4y

You from the Netherlands?

thegreatdivine

4y

I'll always be a fan of Drake's music. I've been a fan since early 2008, right after Comeback Season dropped and before he blew up.

Juninho CLB

4y

Didn’t the Weeknd make it as cheap as possible on iTunes to get the album, that tweet about not caring for sales was cus he knows he’s done on the charts

The Darkest Angel

4y

Then he tweeted about having 2 albums on the Billboard 200 album chart but he "doesn't care" about it

thegreatdivine

4y

I'll always be a fan of Drake's music. I've been a fan since early 2008, right after Comeback Season dropped and before he blew up.

freekodak

4y

Crine this man pushing 30

SinceKumbaya

4y

Y’all some 17 year old white kids ?

freekodak

4y

Ur insecurities are showing

The Darkest Angel

4y

The Weeknd didn't go #1 in either markets. If you read the articles and look at the "global" market a lot you'll notice it never reaches as much as US, China, India because the rest of the world population is very small hence why people put so much emphasis on US sales chart

Dawn FM only went #1 "globally" in 9 countries

Canada 38 million
Australia 25 million
Ireland 5 million
Finland 5.5 million
the Netherlands 17 million
New Zealand 5 million
Norway 5.3 million
Sweden 10.3 million
Switzerland 8.6 million

That total population is very minimal compared to the 300 million in USA, 1 Billion in China, 1.3 billion in India none of which have a big population of The Weeknd fans

gay shoes

4y

sales do not equate to quality.

but with that said, once one of Weeknd's singles catches on it's over, he will probably have a week where he goes #1 out of the blue. it's just one of those kind of albums.