Positions debut on Spotify with 56.4M

[Exhale 230]

BIGGEST FEMALE ALBUM DEBUTS ON SPOTIFYʼS HISTORY:

1. folklore — 80.6m

2. thank u, next — 70.2m

3. positions — 56.4m

4. Lover — 54.9m

5. Chromatica — 48.3m

Honestly I expected it to break th folklore record considering the hype with her pre-album tweets and the lead single and everything. It had 3 songs on Today's Top Hits and the lead single alone had a 119M playlist reach. On the other hand folklore was a surprise release with Cardigan having less than 50M reach. Not to mention "the 1" and "exile", two songs with absolutely no promo outstreamed "36+35", the most promoted non-single from the album. I mean, it should have at least outdid thank u, next 

So is Taylor the new queen of streaming adding to her throne of pure sales? Can tun be considered ari's established peak and is it all downhill for her from here? Thoughts fotp?

[An Impossible Princess 2,323]

Maybe yes. 

[Kai 11,628]

I think it's a pretty good number for an album that's been receiving average critic ratings and lukewarm reception from fans. Plus, it leaked a few days prior to release. The single is predicted to be #1... I mean, you can't expect anymore success than that. Some people here calling her a flop etc... I wish my faves can do these numbers. Also, back in 2017 they also said reputation era was a flop... 

 

Folklore had good critic (92-98 avg rating) and fans reception from the get-go.

[Exhale 230]

3 minutes ago, Honest Vocal Couch Potato said:

I think it's a pretty good number for an album that's been receiving average critic ratings and lukewarm reception from fans. Plus, it leaked a few days prior to release. The single is predicted to be #1... I mean, you can't expect anymore than that. 

 

Folklore had good critic (92-98 avg rating) and fans reception from the get-go.

Actually, thank u next also leaked. And yeah the single is doing great but not as good as thank u next or 7 rings. It's doing break up with ur gf numbers. 

I really thought that ari was gonna become bigger than ever before with this era and that tun wasn't her peak but only a stepping stone to a bigger peak that was yet to come... I mean there was even a tweet with more than 1 million likes 

[Jae 24,239]

Lmao she's so massive that ya'll are out here thinking that debuting in the top 3 female albums of all time with 56 million streams is somehow a disappointment 

[Exhale 230]

2 minutes ago, Jae said:

Lmao she's so massive that ya'll are out here thinking that debuting in the top 3 female albums of all time with 56 million streams is somehow a disappointment 

For her standards, yes. I was rooting for Ariana because I actually liked the album but then the arianators on twitter actually needed this step back 

[Freaky Prince 37,225]

The hype wasnt as big as the TUN one and she still debuted at #3, lets not push it 

[Exhale 230]

2 minutes ago, Freaky Prince said:

The hype wasnt as big as the TUN one and she still debuted at #3, lets not push it 

i may have been clowning when I thought ari was gonna get bigger this era 

 

[Royalty 101,260]

1 hour ago, Jae said:

Lmao she's so massive that ya'll are out here thinking that debuting in the top 3 female albums of all time with 56 million streams is somehow a disappointment 

Ikr  it's a huge achievement, yet people still pretend that it's nothing - clownery, if you ask me

[Shego 30,676]

1 hour ago, Exhale said:

It had 3 songs on Today's Top Hits

 

[Infrared 20,610]

She really fumbled the bag this era. No way her label was going to waste money promoting this snoozefest  

Watch her next album come out a few months from now. literally her most disposable era ever. 

[Princess Aurora 23,311]

It's a cute album. I didn't expect it to do Numbers honestly 

[Tomás 22,839]

There wasn't much hype or build up for this album so I don't think that's so bad at all 

[Mariah's 19 #1s 2,099]

Taylor wiped the floor with that sluts ponytail.

[Mr. Mendes 6,219]

11 hours ago, Exhale said:

Actually, thank u next also leaked. And yeah the single is doing great but not as good as thank u next or 7 rings. It's doing break up with ur gf numbers. 

 

this isn't really a fair comparison to draw considering that positions (song) had been out for just a week prior to the album release. thank u next (song) was out two months before the album and 7  rings was out a month before the album. those songs had time to not only get big, but to gain a ton of streams for the album from the jump. 

really the only reason that it hasn't surpassed tu,n and it's debut is how she chose to release this project. had she not done everything so quickly in terms of releasing then i think we'd be seeing a different story. 

as for taking on folklore, that just wasn't reasonable. first off, ariana is a huge artist but she's not really looked at like an album artist to the extent that taylor is. taylor always treats her albums more seriously than she does her singles and always emphasizes the album as the experience. ariana has never done that, her focus typically is on the singles and she doesn't aim to make her album releases these big events. and second of all, folklore arrived under a huge cloud of mystery. nobody knew what it was going to sound like, nobody knew what she'd done with it. there was no traditional lead single, no snippets, she hadn't even been teasing she was working on an album. ariana meanwhile has been teasing, gave snippets, and didn't really try and hide what the album was and that wasn't going to entice general audiences to pounce on it upon release like they did with folklore.