This article is about the music chart in the United States. For Top Albums Sales in Japan, see Billboard Japan § Albums.
The Top Album Sales is a music chart released weekly by Billboard magazine listing each week's top-selling albums in the United States. The chart has been published since December 13, 2014, although the magazine also retrospectively recognizes the Billboard 200 charts from May 25, 1991, through December 6, 2014, as part of the history of the Top Album Sales listing.[1]Sales figures for the chart are tabulated by Billboard with electronically monitored piece count information from Nielsen SoundScan, now Luminate.
The first number-one album actually published under the Top Album Sales banner was 1989 by Taylor Swift. However, since Billboard also recognizes the history of the Billboard 200 chart since 1990 as part of this chart the magazine recognizes the first chart-topper as Time, Love & Tenderness by Michael Bolton.[2]
History
On May 25, 1991, Billboard began tabulating top-selling albums in the United States with electronically monitored piece count information from Nielsen Soundscan, now known as Luminate.[1] Up until December 2014, the weekly top-selling albums had been documented by the Billboard 200 chart, but that chart was altered to factor in music streaming by accounting for album-equivalent units in its tallies to document the effect of the rise of music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify. During the week of December 6, 2014, the chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units.[1] The Top Album Sales chart was created to preserve the older methodology of counting pure album sales.[3][4][5][6]
The Top Album Sales and the Billboard 200 listed different number-one albums for the first time on February 8, 2015, when Now That's What I Call Music! 53 reached number one on the Top Album Sales (98,000 copies sold), while Taylor Swift's 1989 took the top spot on the Billboard 200 (77,000 copies sold).[7] As streaming became a major metric in music, the disparity between the Top Album Sales and the Billboard 200 grew larger. On October 8, 2016, Drake's Views became the first number-one album on the Billboard 200 to miss the Top 10 of the Top Album Sales, charting at number 22.[8] Meanwhile, We Are Superhuman by NCT 127 became the first album to reach number one on the Top Album Sales but fail to crack the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, peaking at number 11 on June 8, 2019.[9] As streaming continued to dominate, Hoodie SZN by A Boogie wit da Hoodie became the first Billboard 200 number one to miss the Top Album Sales entirely, not selling enough copies to rank within the Top 100 on January 19, 2019.[10] On October 28, 2023, the Top Streaming Albums chart was launched by Billboard and the Top Album Sales chart was reduced from 100 positions to 50.[11][12]
Adele's 25 holds the record for biggest single-week performance on the Top Album Sales chart, selling 3.38 million on the week of December 12, 2015.[13] In December 2023, Swift became the first act to simultaneously occupy the top 4 positions of the chart.[14] In January 2024, Swift also became the first act to simultaneously occupy seven of the top-ten positions.[15][16]
Achievements and milestones
Chart achievements listed below cover the Top Album Sales since its launch in December 2014, as well as the Billboard 200 data between May 1991 and December 2014, which Billboard retrospectively recognizes as part of the Top Album Sales statistics.
Most number-one albums
Taylor Swift has 14 number ones on the Top Album Sales (tie with Jay-Z), including 11 number ones since December 2014.
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