After midnight ET on Jan 7 when The Weeknd released his Dawn FM album and Gunna dropped DS4EVER, fans immediately casted predictions for whose album would garner more sales. Early on, all signs pointed to The Weeknd, considering he has been a longer running commercially successful artist.
Halfway through the week, The Weeknd was projected to sell around 157,000 copies, as Gunna’s projection fell short at around 140,000. This 15,000-20,000 separation estimate seemed accurate, until the official numbers were revealed yesterday (Jan. 14).
According to Chart Data, The Weeknd ended up only beating Gunna by 2,000 sales, as he landed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 154,000 sales and Gunna placed No. 2 with 152,000, almost 10,000 more than what predictions said.
This feat by The Weeknd is impressive, considering a main driving force behind Dawn FM was his indifference towards sales, as he hoped to get the album experience out to fans as soon as possible. This led to there being no physical copies of Dawn FM in its first week, because the release was ahead of schedule. So, all of the album’s sales are based solely on streams.
Both Gunna and The Weeknd have added to their respective albums in recent days, as Gunna added “P Power” with Drake that was initially meant for the original release and The Weeknd dropped the Alternate World edition of Dawn FM with two remixes and one original song. So, perhaps, there could be shift in the sales rankings for these albums’ second week.