After reporting on the initial projections earlier this week (Aug. 22), the final sales numbers for Frank Ocean's Blonde as well as Tory Lanez' I Told You are in. As expected, Blonde will debut at No. 1, selling over 278,000 equivalent album units (sales plus streaming) in its first week, reports HDD, beating out its forecast of 225-250k. Lanez also surpassed the early projections for his debut album, as I Told You reportedly moved over 53,000 albums, including streams. The album will debut at No. 4, behind Drake's VIEWS (77,000) and the "Suicide Squad" soundtrack (74,000).
Frank Ocean's Blonde was released as an album-only purchase on iTunes and as an Apple Music streaming exclusive. It is still only available through Apple platforms, though it was recently reported (Aug. 25) that the album has been illegally downloaded over 750k times. Endless, the "visual album" Ocean released right before Blonde -- which can be viewed only on Apple Music -- is not eligible to chart.
Blonde will become Ocean's first No. 1 album, as 2012's Channel Orange made its debut at No. 2 with 131,000 albums (no streaming back then) sold in its first week.
