The sales of Drake's surprise album If You're Reading This It's Too Late continue to pile up.
Industry sources now project (as of Feb. 14) that the album will likely sell more than 500,000 copies by the end of the tracking week on Feb. 15 -- with a serious chance that number could end up even bigger. Yesterday, the set was aiming for 400,000.
Drake Releases 'If You're Reading This It's Too Late' Album Out of Nowhere
The effort was released late in the evening on Thursday (Feb. 12) to digital retailers through Young Money/Cash Money/Republic Records. It should easily debut at No. 1 next week's Billboard 200 chart, giving Drake his fourth No. 1 (and fourth consecutive leader to debut atop the list).
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Billboard 200's top 10 albums (for the week ending Feb. 15) will be revealed on Feb. 18.
Remarkably, If You're Reading This It's Too Late could tally the second-largest sales week for an album in the past year -- and would do so with less than four days of sales (since it was released in the middle of the week, instead of the traditional Tuesday, when most new releases arrive to retail).
Honestly, these numbers are unheard of in today's day and age. Add in the fact that Drake dropped his album with no release date at all, it's even more remarkable.
