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How Apple Music Exclusives, Like Chance The Rapper's, Are Impacting The Billboard Charts

This article is more than 7 years old.

Apple Music's gamble on Chance The Rapper has clearly paid off.

Coloring Book, the third mixtape from this increasingly popular Chicago-based hip-hop artist, came following months of fan anticipation and features a wide range of guest appearances by artists including Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West, among others. Exclusively available via Apple Music and notably not purchasable via iTunes, Coloring Book hit #8 on the Billboard 200 album chart, making it the first album to score a top 10 debut based entirely on streams--over 57 million of them.

The impact of this ostensibly free release via Apple Music also impacted the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, with "No Problem" and "Blessings" appearing at #86 and #93, respectively. According to Chart News, six additional tracks from Chance's project landed on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart as well, including the Young Thug and Lil Yachty collaboration "Mixtape."

The success of Coloring Book probably feels a bit like déjà vu for Apple, coming just weeks after exclusively premiering Views, the latest album from Drake. Its first week on iTunes and Apple Music resulted in a Billboard 200 chart-topping debut. A staggering 19 out of its 20 songs charted on the Hot 100 that same week. Now weeks later, Views' availability has expanded to other services like Spotify and continues to hold both the top spot on the album chart and 17 spots on the singles chart.

While streaming platform exclusives like Coloring Book and Views continue to vex those who use competing services or otherwise prefer to pay for digital downloads and physical editions of records, they're an increasing part of a key strategy for platforms that don't offer an advertiser-supported freemium option. With prior 2016 exclusives like Future's EVOL and the surprise debut of Drake's OVO Sound signee dvsn, Apple Music reported a subscriber base of 13 million last month, up from 11 million back in February. The April and May releases of both Views and Coloring Book conceivably impacted those subscriber numbers in a positive way.

While no small amount of their subscriber figures comprise listeners who have signed up three-monthlong free trials, the potential to convert those sampling users into paying ones depends to at least some extent on content. Apple Music and Tidal in particular are banking on high profile deals with the likes of Drake and Beyoncé to premiere material from popular artists as both a value proposition and as a means to differentiate themselves from freemium services like Pandora and Spotify.

Having debuted last June, Apple Music has had its share of difficulties in its first eleven months of release, including upsetting reports of digital music listeners whose entire collections were modified and redacted by the program. In response to concerns both internal and external ranging from the user experience to subscriber retention, Apple is expected to relaunch the service next month, though the details have not been made public.