In reply to Brent Christopher.

@Brent: Great analysis. I wouldn't say pure sales don't matter at all, but certainly not as much as just a couple of years ago. The conversion to streaming is still happening, albeit quickly, and it's not complete; but as more mature segments of the population find streaming, pure sales will fade to almost nothing.

The hard truth is the streaming tells the tale, especially if the numbers hold beyond the first week. How many of us have ever bought a CD only to end up not liking it very much and only listening to it once, or to just listen to one song? It takes 1,500 streams to equal one sale. To have a nice round number, let's say that J. Cole's album garnered 375 million streams this week. That's a lot, and it means that many listeners liked what they hard and listened multiple times.

And with streaming approximately grossing $100k per 15 million streams, his album has already brought in millions.