Billboard: Bon Jovi’s Back at No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart
Bon Jovi’s former No. 1 album, This House Is Not for Sale, is back atop the Billboard 200 chart for a second week.
The set re-enters the tally with 120,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 1, according to Nielsen Music, up from a negligible figure in the previous week. Essentially all of its sum is traditional album sales. The surge back to No. 1 is owed nearly entirely to sales generated by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with Bon Jovi’s upcoming U.S. arena tour.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new March 10-dated chart (where Bon Jovi returns to No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard‘s websites on Tuesday (March 6).
This House Is Not for Sale first led the Billboard 200 on Nov. 26, 2016, when it opened in the penthouse with 129,000 units (128,000 in album sales), also drivenby a ticket/album sale redemption offer. The set marked the band’s sixth chart-topper.
Bon Jovi’s tour kicks off on March 14 at the Pepsi Center in Denver. The 24-date U.S. trek is slated to wrap on May 24 at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. In total, Billboard estimates the tour may sell between 350,000 and 375,000 tickets.
For the tour’s ticket/album sale redemption offer, the price of the standard CD edition of This House Is Not for Sale was bundled into the purchase price of each ticket sold online to the tour. Customers received, via email, a redemption offer for the album, where they could choose to redeem the CD and have it mailed to them. The only sales that count towards the charts are those albums that are redeemed by customers. Many ticket buyers never redeem the offer.
This House Is Not for Sale is the third album to re-enter the Billboard 200 straight in at No. 1, following Prince’s The Very Best of Prince coming back to the chart at No. 1following his death in 2016, and Chris Stapleton’s Traveller, after his big night on the 2015 Country Music Association Awards. Further, This House Is Not for Sale’s 15-month gap between stints at No. 1 is the longest amount of time for an album to reclaim the summit.
At No. 2 on the new Billboard 200, Black Panther: The Album moves down a slot after two weeks atop the list. The set earned 99,000 units (down 24 percent). Migos’ Culture II dips 2-3 with 59,000 units (down 7 percent).
Rapper 6ix9ine arrives at No. 4 with his debut effort, Day69, earning 55,000 units. Of that sum, 20,000 were in traditional album sales and 2,000 were in TEA units. Streams drove the bulk of the debut, as the set garnered 33,000 SEA units, equaling 50 million on-demand audio streams for the album’s tracks in the week ending March 1.
The 21-year-old artist (born Daniel Hernandez) only recently made his Billboardchart debut with the hit single “Gummo.” The song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated Dec. 2, 2017, on its way to a No. 12 peak (Dec. 30). Through Feb. 22, the song had generated 312 million on-demand audio and video streams.
Following “Gummo,” he dropped two further tracks — “Kooda,” and “Keke,” with Fetty Wap and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie.” Both tunes also hit the Hot 100, and combined, the three tracks have amassed more than a half-billion on-demand streams. All three songs are featured on the 11-track Day69 album.
The soundtrack to The Greatest Showman falls 3-5 with 53,000 units (down 14 percent). It’s likely the album could see a rise on next week’s chart, following the 90th Academy Awards broadcast on ABC March 4. The show will feature a performance of the album’s “This Is Me,” which is nominated for best original song.
Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (Divide) rises 7-6 with a little more than 39,000 units (up 5 percent), while Post Malone’s Stoney climbs 9-7 with 39,000 units (up 24 percent). The latter likely gains due to excitement surrounding his new single “Psycho,” featuring Ty Dolla $ign, which was released on Feb. 23 — but is not included on Stoney. (As previously reported, “Psycho” should start in the top five, perhaps as high as No. 2, on the March 10-dated Billboard Hot 100.)
Imagine Dragons’ Evolve ascends 13-8 on the Billboard 200 with 31,000 units (up 32 percent), following the album’s reissue on Feb. 21 with the band’s new track, “Next to Me,” and sale pricing for the set in the iTunes Store. Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN.moves 8-9 with 29,000 units (down 11 percent).
Singer-songwriter Vance Joy earns his first Billboard 200 top 10 album, as his second effort, Nation of Two, bows at No. 10 with 28,000 units (18,000 in album sales). He first reached the list with his first set, Dream Your Life Away, which debuted and peaked at No. 17 on Sept. 17, 2014, and has earned 1 million in equivalent album units (339,000 in traditional album sales).
Dream launched his hit single “Riptide,” which peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 1 for five weeks on Alternative Songs, No. 2 on Hot Rock Songs, and went top 10 on Adult Alternative Songs and Adult Pop Songs. The new album was led by the single “Lay It on Me,” which premiered last July, and spent three weeks atop the Adult Alternative Songs chart, and went top five on Alternative Songs. The set’s newest single, “Saturday Sun,” is scaling both the Alternative Songs and Adult Alternative Songs tallies.
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