DJ Khaled v.

Billboard
BY BERNARDO MORA QUEGE
Billboard History

 Entertainment media company founded in

1894 as a publication for show bill posters
 With the advent of radio and jukeboxes,
they began tracking music sales
 Most known for the Hot 100 and Billboard
200 weekly lists, ranking singles and
albums by sales values
What is a sale?

Sales used to only refer to physical units sold, but has evolved to include digital album
sales, digital single sales, and streaming.

In 2018, 29 out of 52 number 1 albums were

While it takes over 1000 streams to count as powered by streaming
an album sale, most artists figures come
Of the other 23, only one had primarily retail
mostly from streaming. sales (Carrie Underwood’s Cry Pretty).
The Bundle Debate
 In 2004, Prince bundled CDs of his album
Musicology with tour tickets, inflating his sales.
After Billboard allowed the bundles to count, Prince
rode the number 1 spot for several weeks.
 Billboard took notice and adapted the rules, making
it so the consumer should “opt into” receiving the
album.
 Today merch is typically sold along with a download
code
 Create hype with pre-sale bundles that drop
when the album is released
 Billboard made it so only redeemed download
codes count
DJ Khaled
 Producer, talent curator, and media
personality.
 Multiple no. 1 hits and a history of big-
name features.
 Newest album, Father of Asahd, debuted
at no. 2 in the Billboard 200
 This prompted social media outbursts
from Khaled and his team, culminating
with the threat of a lawsuit against
Billboard
What happened?

 Billboard decided not to count over

100,000 units sold because of a
suspect promotional campaign and
anomalies in the numbers.
 Album was bundled with energy
drinks
 Company prompted consumers to
buy multiple cases of the drink to
spike DJ Khaled’s sales
What does it mean?

 While DJ Khaled’s methods might have been suspect, the case brought light to a
big debate in the music industry
 With so little traction coming from actual sales, artists looking for a no. 1 album
have to find new ways of gaming the system
 Billboard has now publicly stated that they will look into its present regulations
and create stricter rules for what counts as a sale and what can constitute a bundle.
  Do you think he should have gotten no. 1?
Questions  Should bundles still be allowed to count as sales?