RS Charts: Juice WRLD Dominates Artists 500 Chart

Juice WRLD claimed the Number One spot on the Artists 500 chart after his posthumous album, Legends Never Die, had the biggest debut week of 2020.

The late rapper amassed an incredible 329.9 million song streams for the week of July 10th through the 16th. Those numbers were fueled by Legends Never Die, which debuted at Number One on the Top 200 Albums chart, moving 517,800 album-equivalent units.

On the Top 100 Songs chart, tracks from Legends Never Die accounted for eight of the Top 10 songs this week, with “Come & Go,” a collaboration with Marshmello debuting at Number One, with 29.9 million streams. (Because streams for collaborations currently go toward the collaborative artists, Juice WRLD and Marshmello take Number 11 on the Artists 500.)

The Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart ranks the most-streamed artists of the week in the United States, taking into account audio streams across an artist’s entire catalog during the tracking period. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Artists 500 is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ended the previous Thursday.

Coming in behind Juice WRLD was last week’s Artists 500 Number One, Pop Smoke, who accumulated 154.4 million streams this week, down from 251.1 million last week. Those numbers were driven by Pop’s own posthumous album, Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon, which dropped to Number Two on the Rolling Stone 200, as it moved 109,400 album units thanks primarily to 130.4 million song streams.

The current streaming dominance of Juice WRLD and Pop Smoke pushed recent Artists 500 king Drake down to Number Three, as he pulled in 105.8 million streams, though he could bounce back next week when his new song, “Only You Freestyle,” makes its chart debut. The only other shake-up in the Top 10 was Rod Wave jumping from Number 11 to Number Nine, notching 59.3 million streams as his latest single, “Rags2Riches,” continued to climb the Rolling Stone 100, settling at Number 30 this week.