Los Angeles, USA
Despite its unexpected release last Sunday, Kanye West’s “Donda” could not have had a better release and is already the album with the highest number of listens on Spotify worldwide in its first 24 hours of life.
Universal Music celebrates this in a statement in which it highlights, among other commercial successes, the 95 million views achieved on its first day of contact with the public on the Swedish streaming platform.
The new American rapper thus surpasses the record set about a year ago by his compatriot Taylor Swift, who set this “record” at just over 80 million listens after the release of his album “Folklore” (2020).
“Donda” has gone further and has managed to far exceed the figure collected on another platform of this nature, Apple Music, with 82 million compared to 35.4 on Swift’s album.
These data make this release the most important of 2021 in terms of commercial success, at least in its first day, with more than 180 million “streamings” worldwide in a single day, according to Universal.
It remains to be seen whether Kanye West’s tenth studio album will keep pace and also surpass the two million copies and 500 million views that “Folklore” achieved in its first week.
In addition, next Friday there will be a tough competition of figures when “Certified Lover Boy” is released, the long-awaited new album by another hip hop giant, the Canadian Drake, who finished last decade as the artist with the most cumulative views of their tracks on the Spotify platform.
“Donda”, so named in honor of the artist’s mother, was published this Sunday by surprise and after numerous delays without the permission of its creator, as he reported on his social media.
Almost two hours long and 27 cuts mark his repertoire, which includes an impressive list of collaborators, such as Jay-Z, The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Young Thug, PUSHA T or Kid Cudi, among many others.
With hundreds of millions of records sold worldwide, West is one of the most award-winning artists in all of Grammy history since the release of his first work, “The College Dropout” (2004), which was followed by other acclaimed by critics such as “808s & Heartbreak” (2008) or “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” (2010).