
Sales predictions for the first week were all over the place. The market, which estimates sales in chunks of 50,000 units, fluctuated wildly leading up to and following the release. Early in May, predictions were around 500,000 units, peaking near 548,000 before the release, then dropping to about 360,000 when the album became available on streaming services. It recovered somewhat to around 470,000 by Saturday morning. Currently, most analysts predict sales between 450,000 and 500,000 (19%), a drop from earlier expectations of 600,000 or more, which now account for around 42% of predictions. This constant change happens because a small group of people are trying to guess the official sales numbers (which won’t be available until next week) by closely watching streaming data from Spotify and Apple Music.