Sabrina Carpenter Billboard Duel With Travis Scott Causes Holdup

(Bloomberg) -- Sabrina Carpenter and Travis Scott are locked in a bare-knuckles fight to claim the top spot on Billboard’s weekly album charts, prompting an unusual delay in announcing the winner.

Luminate, the music industry’s main data provider in the US, includes sales between Friday, when new music is released, and the following Thursday. Scott had the best-selling album of the week as of Saturday morning, according to Luminate data obtained by Bloomberg. But by Monday morning Carpenter had overtaken him, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

Luminate has delayed the release of the winner, which is usually published through Penske Media Corp.’s Billboard on Sunday, said the person, who declined to be identified because the data is private. Luminate continues to receive sales updates from different providers once the week is over, so the daily numbers are incomplete and subject to change.

A spokesperson for Penske Media didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the contest.

Crowning Week

This is supposed to be the crowning week of Carpenter’s career. The Disney Channel ingenue turned pop star was expected to claim her first No. 1 album in six tries with Short n’ Sweet, which she released Aug. 23. Her work has dominated the song charts’ music of the year, led by the unofficial song of summer, Espresso. She currently has three songs in Spotify’s global top 10.

But Scott, the popular Houston rapper, re-released his mixtape Days Before Rodeo on the same day as Short n’ Sweet in celebration of the record’s 10th anniversary. The 12-track mixtape, which was originally released in August 2014, was made available to all major platforms for the first time. Scott sold a deluxe version featuring extra songs from the period on his website. The deluxe version sold so well that by the middle of last week the two acts were in competition to debut at No. 1.

As Scott and Carpenter vied for the top spot, both artists began releasing new versions of their albums with different bonus tracks to boost the numbers. Carpenter released a couple versions with one additional track as well as one with a demo version of her song Taste, while Scott released a live version and a version with a type of remixing known as chopped and screwed.

Gaming the Charts

While having the No. 1 album is largely a symbolic achievement, artists have long competed for the top spot. They have released different versions and bundled albums with concert tickets and merchandise. Luminate and Billboard have at times had to change the rules to prevent people from gaming the charts.

Scott topped fellow rapper Nicki Minaj in 2018 when both artists bundled their albums with concert tickets to boost sales. Minaj later complained about this, and Billboard eventually stopped counting album bundles in its sales figures. Carpenter nodded at the controversy this past week, tweeting “this one’s for nicki” when she released one of her digital versions.

Carpenter has been boosted throughout the year by Taylor Swift, this year’s queen of chart management. Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, debuted atop the charts on its release and stayed there for 12 consecutive weeks. 

When Swift faced a fresh threat for the top spot, she often released a new version to remain there. She released three new editions of the album one day before Billie Eilish released her new record, Hit Me Hard and Soft. Eilish had the biggest debut week of her career but finished behind Swift. Swift restocked some CD variants of her album, including a signed edition, just in time for Zach Bryan’s latest record.

Most of these versions differ from the original only slightly, but devoted fans of artists buy up different copies as a way of supporting their favorite acts. That’s a big reason Korean pop groups sell so many physical copies of their albums while digital consumption is fairly low, and how Swift has remained atop the charts for most of the year when her highest-ranking song at the moment is from an album released in 2019.

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