Travis Scott is poised for major first-week sales figures with his latest album Utopia.
According to HITS Daily Double, the project is on pace to earn at least 350 million streams in its first seven days, which equates to around 245,000 to 275,000 SEA (streaming equivalent albums) units.
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However, that figure doesn’t include pure album sales, which industry insiders believe could surpass 200,000. Scott has been hawking physical copies of Utopia on his website with various merch and zine bundle packages, as well as five different album covers for fans to choose from.
In May, Billboard updated its eligibility rules by restoring some formats of merch bundle sales when calculating chart positions. Under the new rules, artists may only sell two different “fan bundle” variations, which must come with a physical copy of the album and a piece of merch.
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Utopia‘s total figure could exceed half a million sales and possibly top the first-week tally for his last album, Astroworld, which debuted with 538,000 album-equivalent units in 2018.
Astroworld, which comfortably cruised to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, had the second-larges sales week that year behind only Drake‘s Scorpion, which notched a staggering 732,000 first-week units.
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While Utopia‘s final first-week sales won’t be unveiled for another week, the album has already been making a huge splash on streaming services. According to Chart Data, it earned over 128 million first-day streams on Spotify, making it the biggest debut of 2023 and fifth largest of all time.
In doing so, Travis Scott has joined Drake, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar and XXXTENTACION as the only rappers to earn over 100 million streams in a single day in Spotify history.
Released on Friday (July 28), Utopia clocks in at 19 tracks and boasts A-list appearances from the likes of Drake, Future, Beyoncé, Playboi Carti, The Weeknd, 21 Savage, Young Thug, SZA, Kid Cudi, Bad Bunny and Westside Gunn.
Astroworld was similarly stacked with big-name guests in 2018, with Frank Ocean, Drake, Swae Lee, Juice WRLD, Quavo, TakeOff, Kid Cudi, The Weeknd, 21 Savage and Gunna among the star-studded supporting cast.
Utopia was set to be unveiled during a special concert at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt on Friday, but the show was canceled just two days before.
The decision came after pushback from the Egyptian General Syndicate for Musical Professions, who had expressed concern over La Flame’s “strange rituals” that they claimed went against the country’s cultural values and traditions.
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“Since the General Syndicate is part of the fabric of this beloved country it is keen on its stability and refuses to tamper with societal values and Egyptian and Arab customs,” the organization said in a statement earlier this month.
“Based on research and documented information about strange rituals at Travis’s concerts that are inconsistent with our authentic societal values and traditions, the Board of Directors has decided to cancel the license issued to hold this type of concert that contradicts the cultural identity of the Egyptian people.”
