Posted by 
This week’s Billboard album chart was the subject of a dramatic sales battle between two big stars. Two week ago, newly anointed pop-queen Sabrina Carpenter released her long-awaited and generally excellent album Short N’ Sweet. Travis Scott, meanwhile, made his 2014 mixtape Days Before Rodeo available on streaming services for the first time. Before the chart came out, Scott’s Cactus Jack label was reportedly already disputing Billboard‘s tabulation methods.
Both Short N’ Sweet sold extremely well, with album-equivalent units in the hundreds of thousands, Carpenter won in a photo finish. Short N’ Sweet ended the week with 362,000 album units while Days Before Rodeo racked up about 361,000. In his quest to beat Carpenter to the #1 spot, Travis Scott released several different deluxe digital editions of Days Before Rodeo, but it didn’t work. Neither, apparently, did complaining to Billboard.
Today, Vulture reports that anonymous representatives for Cactus Jack Records sent a letter to Billboard and tabulation company Luminate in advance of the final chart’s 9/3 publication. In that letter, Cactus Jack claimed that Billboard‘s methods were “unreliable and incomplete” and that they missed a portion of Days Before Rodeo sales that would’ve presumably pushed that album to #1. Specifically, the letter says that Billboard missed “an extremely high volume of orders” for Days Before Rodeo when a final deluxe edition came out at 11:20PM on 8/29, the final day of tracking.
In the letter, the Cactus Jack representatives speculate that a Luminate employee could have “a personal incentive” to help Sabrina Carpenter reach #1, since he formerly worked at Island Records, Carpenter’s label. The letter writers further say that they were “not reaching out as management for an upset artist” but on behalf of the Cactus Jack label and store. In response, a spokesperson for Luminate says that the company is often in contact with labels and stands by the final chart: “We are confident that our numbers are correct in accordance with our processes and methodology.”
Pop stars, please note: A #2 debut on the album chart, especially for a decade-old mixtape, is way less embarrassing than a story like this.