Pollstar’s Elite 100: Eminem Tops Taylor Swift; Travis Scott, G-Eazy Hit Top 10

Eminem, just announced as a headliner for the world-famous Coachella festival in California as well as Governors Ball in New York, tops this week’s Elite 100 Artists Chart following the release of his new Revival LP, while a surprise release from Travis Scott & Quavo sees the rappers crack the Top 5 as well.  

Chris McKay / Music Midtown Festival / GettyImages.com – Eminem
Music Midtown Festival, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Ga.

Eminem’s Revival sold just under 65,000 copies for the week ending Dec. 28 according to BuzzAngle Music, and sees the real Slim Shady above No. 2 Taylor Swift thanks to stronger song sales and streaming activity, in his album’s second full week of release.

Agent Cara Lewis told Pollstar earlier this year Eminem would be making select U.S. appearances in 2018.

See:
This Week’s Elite 100 Artists Chart
Last  Week’s Chart
All Elite 100 Artists Charts

Pollstar, with the BuzzAngle Music-powered Elite 100 Artists Chart, gives a snapshot of the week’s top-selling artists based on music sales and streaming, counting data from the U.S. and Canada. 

All product, not just current releases, by that artist are included in the figures and the total for ranking purposes is based on an album sale equaling one with ten song sales or 1,500 on-demand stream also equaling one album.

Travis Scott and Migos hit-maker Quavo had been teasing a new release together and somewhat surprisingly dropped the collaborative Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho Dec. 22, landing them at No. 5 on the chart this week with solid album sales but by far mostly thanks to streaming activity.

Another Cara Lewis client, Travis Scott has been red hot this year and is poised to play arenas in 2018, according to Lewis.

Scott was on tour with red-hot rapper Kendrick Lamar for his major U.S. arena tour, and had his own headline run in the spring. Major showings included 6,174 tickets sold May 24 at Farm Bureau Insurance Law at White River State Park in Indianapolis ($281,175 gross), 9,280 tickets sold May 13 at Walmart AMP in Rogers, Ark. ($241,131), and a sold-out Stage AE in Pittsburgh May 2 at 4,500 tickets and $178,000 gross.

Scott Legato / Getty Images – Travis Scott
Festival D’Quebec

Another rapper with a big week was Oakland-based G-Eazy, whose The Beautiful & Damned dropped Dec. 15 and this week enjoyed strong song sales putting him to No. 10 on the chart.

After doing massive ticket sales on a co-bill tour with Logic in 2016 (nearly 300,000 tickets sold according to Pollstar) and many festivals in 2017, G-Eazy has a headline tour in Feb-March taking in large venues including Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas, Comerica Theatre in Phoenix, two nights at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, and Radio City Music Hall with Phora, Anthony Russo Band, and Trippie Redd in support.

It wasn’t just a big week for hip-hop, as BuzzAngle Music just released its 2017 Music Consumption Report Highlights, which shows, “Once again, Hip-Hop/Rap (20.9%) was the top genre in terms of total song consumption, with Rock close behind with a 19.8% share.”

Also for the year, audio streams reached a new record high of 376.9 billion, up 50 percent over 2016. There were more than twice as many streams on any given day during 2017 than song downloads for the entire year, according to the report. The daily average of streams was 1.67 billion, with song downloads for the entire year at 563.7 million