We have already declared Taylor Swift’s Folklore to be the Best Album of 2020. But until now, we still had to hear about the numbers. Now the numbers have spoken, the data has been gathered in whole and decimal numbers and the answer is: Folklore it’s the bigger 2020 album as well.
Swift’s eighth studio album, one of two complete albums she released in 2020, takes first place on the Rolling StoneTop 200 New Year’s Albums from. In 2020, Folklore pulled close to 2.3 million equivalent album units.
Swift fell Folklore in July of complete surprise – a somewhat non-Swift-ian thing to do – and subsequently broke a string of RS Charts records – a very Swift-ian thing to do. Folklore saw the biggest sales week of 2020 – the biggest, in fact, since his 2019 LP Lover – and broke the RS 200 record for most consecutive weeks as number one, with six consecutive weeks at the top. In addition to 1.1 billion audio streams on demand, Folklore was the best-selling album of the year, with over 1.2 million sales.
Overall, Swift has five albums on the year-end RS 200, with Lover entering number 28 and Ever at number 63, despite having been launched in early December. 1989 and Reputation take numbers 116 and 165, respectively. The only artist with the most albums on the holiday chart is Drake, with six, led by Dark Lane demo tapes number 20.
Right behind Folklore in number two is My turn, Lil Baby’s second album that saw more than 2.1 million album-equivalent units in 2020. But where Folklore was a great seller, most of My turn’The units came from streams. All said, My turn saw over 3 billion audio streams on demand in 2020, almost three times more than Folklore. Lil Baby has been moving at breakneck speed since his 2017 mixtape At the ideal time, seeing double-digit growth, sometimes three-digit growth, year after year. This year was no exception, as he saw a 71 percent increase in flows in 2020 compared to 2019. Compared to his predecessor, Stronger than ever, My turn it was a much bigger success on the charts: Stronger than ever it was only the 27th most popular album of 2018, according to Alpha Data.
Third place in the year-end count goes to the posthumous Pop Smoke Shoot the stars aim the moon, which collected just under 2 million units equivalent to the album since its release in July until the end of 2020. The Weeknd’s After hours and posthumous Juice WRLD Legends never die complete the Top Five.
O Rolling Stone The 200 album chart follows the most popular releases of the week in the United States. Entries are classified by album units, a number that combines sales of digital and physical albums, sales of digital music and audio streams using a custom weighting system. The chart does not include passive listening, such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. End of the year Rolling Stone The 200 album chart covers streams and sales from January 3, 2020 to December 31, 2020.
Although hip-hop continued to dominate the charts, accounting for almost half of its titles, this did not mark a noticeable increase over 2019. Hip-hop broadcasts increased by 11 percent, which was less than the overall increase of 16 percent in transmissions. Pop also remained stable compared to 2019 at the end of year RS 200. The only two genres that had a noticeable increase were Country and Latin, which makes sense when you consider that these were also the two genres – in addition to Easy Listening, New Age, and Children’s Music – which grew year after year in streams greater than the general increase in streams.
Luke Combs had an impressive performance on the RS 200 at the end of the year, with two albums in the top 20. His 2020 album What you see is what you get, led the way at Number Eight, while his debut This is for you takes 11th. (Year-end totals for both albums include original releases and their luxury reissues.) Morgan Wallen, however, had two albums on the chart, led by If I know myself at number 21. This year, 22 country albums were recorded at the end of the year, against 20 country albums in 2019.
Five Latin albums – four of which were Bad Bunny albums – made it to the RS 200 this year, up from two last year.
MAIN ALBUMS – SALES
The top 10 looks very different, of course, when you look only at album sales. Here, Taylor Swift’s Folklore leads a much heavier list of pop. After his eighth surprise studio album saw the biggest sales week of the year, he saw 1.2 million total sales in 2020. This is the second consecutive year that Swift has the best-selling album of the year after 2019 Lover. Ever also enters the list, with 270,000.
- Folklore, Taylor Swift – 1.2 million
- After hours, The Weeknd – 476,000
- Soul Map: 7, BTS – 361,000
- Legends never die, Juice Wrld – 342,000
- Thin line, Harry Styles – 333,000
- Chromatica, Lady Gaga – 312,000
- Manic, Halsey – 279,000
- Ever, Taylor Swift – 270,000
- Music to be murdered, Eminem – 259,000
- Here and now, Kenny Chesney – 259,000
MAIN ALBUMS – AUDIO TRANSMISSION ON DEMAND
Even though hip-hop did not see the greatest advances in flows, it was still the most dominant genre. It is therefore no surprise that the top 10 albums by on-demand audio streams are much heavier than hip-hop than the RS 200. My turn tops this list too, and DaBaby’s It’s the baby’s fault is also in the Top 10. And while the Hamilton the soundtrack has always been a strong streamer, reaching new heights in 2020 – Number Two on the RS 200 – after the musical was released on Disney +.
- My turn, Lil Baby – 3 billion
- Shoot the stars, aim for the moon, Pop Smoke – 2.6 billion
- Legends never die, Juice Wrld – 2.3 billion
- Please excuse me for being anti-social, Roddy Ricch – 2.3 billion
- Hollywood bleeding, Post Malone – 2.2 billion
- After hours, The Weeknd – 1.8 billion
- Eternal Atake, Lil Uzi Vert – 1.7 billion
- YHLQMDLG, Bad Bunny – 1.6 billion
- It’s the baby’s fault, DaBaby – 1.6 billion
- Hamilton, Various Artists – 1.5 billion
See the full year-end RS 200 here.