AppleInsider reports that Dr. Dre’s oft-delayed Compton: A Soundtrack album, which was streamed exclusively on Apple Music, was streamed 25 million times in the first week that it was available, with almost half-a-million paid downloads on iTunes in the first week.
The album was released on August 7 as an Apple exclusive for 2 weeks, and is inspired by Straight Outta Compton, the new movie based on the career of the hip-hop legends N.W.A., of which Dr. Dre was a founding member, along with Ice Cube, the late Eazy-E, and Arabian Prince.
Apple issued a statement about the album’s first-week numbers to The New York Times.
“We’re beginning to show what we can do in terms of communicating music to a worldwide audience and helping artists at the same time,” said Jimmy Iovine in the statement.
The album’s sales have landed it at number 2 on the Billboard Top 200 album sales chart, which is also the highest chart position achieved by Dr. Dre’s previous two albums released in 1992 and 1999 respectively.
Source: Dr. Dre s Compton album hits 25M streams on Apple Music in first week