Tyler, The Creator’s Chromakopia has debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart, the publication confirmed on Sunday, marking the rapper’s third consecutive Number One record.
Tyler broke away from industry norms for Chromakopia’s rollout, electing to drop the project on a Monday morning rather than at the typical midnight Friday standard. He released it at the beginning of the work week hoping it would get fans to listen more attentively before heading into the weekend.
“I know people think because of the weekend they can listen to stuff and the streams go up,” Tyler told Nardwuar in an interview last year, advocating for a return for albums to come out on Tuesdays since a shift to Fridays in 2015. “And the streaming people are like, ‘Oh, the streams go up on the weekend.’ But I think it’s a lot of passive listening at parties or people get the time to go to the gym, so they’re not really listening. If you put it out during that week, that commute to work or to school, you really have the hour to really dive in.”
With the Monday rollout, Tyler gave himself three fewer days in the sales week to compete on the charts, but it didn’t seem to matter; Chromakopia opened with 299,500 sales and 212.55 million streams, making this his best-ever streaming and albums sales week in terms of units. The album would have been Number One based on either one of those feats individually.
Whether Tyler’s Monday release will inspire more of the industry to adopt the strategy remains to be seen, though it may not be likely. As Audiomack co-founder Brian Zisook points out, many smaller artists may not have have the same level of control over their release strategies that Tyler has earned as an established superstar. And if the primary goal for your record is to secure a Number One, the strategy could pose a challenge given that it cuts out several days of sales tracking.
Still, for a longer tail strategy beyond a single week of sales, Zisook says going earlier is better for making the music stick with the audience.
“Tyler is right. When you release on a Friday, your window to create engagement is basically a day because people have two different types of schedules,” Zisook says. “They have a fixed schedule Monday through Friday, and then they have a variable schedule on weekends. There’s only a handful of artists where people stay up that late now for an artist Thursday nights, whereas him releasing at 6 a.m. on a Monday, it will be discussed throughout the day. Theoretically, more people will find out about it who are either casual or tangentially interested, and then that will absolutely carry over into Tuesday through Friday.”
Not to mention, releasing at the beginning of the week means having the undivided attention of the employees at record labels, who, like anyone else working the typical work week, go home for the weekend after Friday.
“They ain’t working the weekend. Outside of a select few artists, five or six o’clock on a Friday, they pick it up Monday,” Zisook says. “And the truth is, most major labels have bloated rosters and on any given week they’re releasing between five and 40 projects. By Monday, most have turned the page on the previous week’s releasing because they’re focusing on that week. If you want to execute a significant marketing campaign, Monday allows you to do that for four to five straight days while everyone is on this fixed schedule.”
Also debuting on the chart this week is fellow Columbia artist Halsey’s The Great Impersonator, which opened up at Number Two with 93,000 album sales. Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet, Kelsea Ballerini’s Patterns, and Rod Wave’s Last Lap rounded out the Top Five. With Tyler’s crown secured, the question becomes how much momentum he maintains going into next week.