https://stillcrew.com/the-record-breaking-more-life-streaming-numbers-are-a-hoax-we-all-want-to-believe-92b735337bbe

The biggest artist in the world right now is from Toronto and that makes me so damn proud. No matter where I’m at in the world, people ask about the impact Drake has had on the Toronto music scene; and after More Life dropped on Saturday, March 18, interest is at an all-time high. As an artist, he has captivated listeners from the suburbs of London,to the Sheikhs of Abu Dhabi, and even the hypebeasts from Tokyo. His popularity is visible with every passing OVO owl-hoody on the street. That being said, there are some questions stemming from his Apple partnership that need to be addressed before things get out of hand.

Before we dive in, let me unequivocally say the new record is fire. I’ve supported Canadian music for decades and was screaming “The City is Mine” long before Ben Baller was icing out Aubrey’s G-Shock collection. This isn’t a review of the album, but I have to state most of the tracks get a rewind and I understand the rest of the joints aren’t for me, they are for soccer moms who needed “Hotline Bling Part 2.” It’s a business, we get it.

Earlier this week, reports dropped that showed first-week sales and streaming and, because I am in the business of making sure Canada’s music business expands globally, it was in all of our interests to see big numbers. Naturally, The Boy delivered in spades with another no. 1. With 505,000 equivalent album units moved in the first seven days, Drizzy reportedly sold 248,000 album sales (digital) and the remaining 257,000 “sales” were driven through 384.8 million streams of the 22-track project. This is where things get interesting, though.

Apple Music paid Drake an insane eight-figure sum in a partnership that would see him draw listeners into their radio station platform, Beats 1. This might sound drastic but they shelled out $3 billion in 2014 to purchase Beats by Dre and inherited the Beats Radio product alongside, so a marketing and promotions budget like the Drake deal isn’t much on top of that. By attaching some star power to a nascent programming roster, they catapulted themselves into the cultural spotlight by creating captivating moments for the world to consume.

More Life debuted on Beats 1 radio on OVO’s Saturday show. Without a doubt, people changed their schedules to be present for the stream. This is powerful because while some artists have huge fanbases, they don’t have the ability to activate them. If Gucci Mane tweeted his sixth mixtape of the month was going to stream for the first time at LiveMixtapes on Sunday night, how many people would cancel dinner to be there? Artists who can activate their audience have deeper engagement, and Drake has an emotional connection that gives him massive persuasion powers with fans.

When Apple reported in December that they had hit 20 million subscribers (paid and trial), they allowed us to approximate the growth of their customer base since they had announced their 17 million mark in September 2016. This week, they announced that More Life had been streamed a remarkable 300 million times on their service in just one week. The project, which runs over 80 minutes, shattered the record he set with VIEWS (it saw a similar growth in streams on Spotify). This was great news for the “playlist,” for the OVO squad, for Toronto strippers, and even for the Canadian industry, as it further cemented our international star and strengthened the city’s image as a musically talented metropolis.

But wait—Spotify has over 100 million subscribers with more than 50 million paying for the service. Employees suggested to me the service’s total base to be closer to 130 million, which makes sense given how many valid, paid subscribers they have managed to secure. Why does this matter? Drake did 255.6 million Spotify streams in the first week, which broke Ed Sheeran’s record the week before. Notably, Ed does not have a contract with Apple.

If we analyze Apple Music numbers, we find out that every single subscriber (paid and trial) must have listened to the album over 15 times, front-to-back, in the week it dropped to achieve the 300 million reported streams. For an album that lasts an hour and twenty minutes, this means every single one of their 20 million users listened to one project for over 20 hours in the first week of its release. Meanwhile, Spotify’s subscribers, a number which is more than five-times Apple’s subscriber base, didn’t even come close to that mark.

At this point, it should be noted that unlike BDS radio spins, retail scans on physical albums, and other antiquated tracking systems, nobody has the ability to verify Apple’s streaming numbers. A source from the Los Angeles Apple Music team confirmed that users listening to OVO Radio would count as streams toward the total, but even those are unverified. It would be a beautiful thing if these numbers were 100% accurate, but when compared to an arbitrary streaming source, one that didn’t invest almost $20 mil into the artist, one that doesn’t have a vested interest in seeing him succeed, things look shaky.

In Tommy Mottola’s book, he described his tumultuous relationship with another global superstar that broke records with every release: Michael Jackson. When The King of Pop was renegotiating with Sony, Mottola offered him the moon and the stars. Eventually, they agreed on an eye-popping $35 million deal, but at the last minute Jackson balked. He would only sign the paperwork if they issued a press release and publicized the deal as a “Billion Dollar Deal.” You see, my friends, the entertainment game isn’t quite like it appears on BET, YouTube, and your favorite local blog.

If the “Billion Dollar Deal” sounds like a familiar range, it might be because VIEWS was positioned as the first project to earn over a billion streams on Apple Music — ever. If we remember the user-base that Apple Music had back when the project dropped last year — somewhere around 15 million—that means that every single user listened to the project about 66 times from front to back.

Again, this assumes that every single Apple subscriber, old and young, was listening this much. The Boy is popular, but this would mean every single registrant was a die-hard Drake fan — millions of homogeneous listening preferences with something as personal as music. And for every user who wasn’t a fan, that means the rest of them must have been listening to the project even more. Effectively, Apple Music would have to be a Drake Fan Club with millions of people tattooing his name on their faces for these figures to be true.

These numbers don’t add up in the worst way. As stated at the outset, I am a massive fan of the project, the artist, the camp behind it, and the Toronto scene that benefits from this release being a smash. My concern with staging theatrics like this is that a slippery slope detracts from the actual narrative behind the project. When we start fabricating figures, we taint the legacy of the project, which could have stood strong based on verified no. 1’s (make no mistake, “Passion Fruit” is this summer’s “One Dance”), hit videos, and sold-out world tours that connect continents by featuring all the artists from the album.

In an era of click farms, Snapchat Story bots, alternative facts, and Tinder catfish, are we ready to accept the application of Instagram filters over our facts?