‘Hamilton Mixtape’ Debuts at No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart
The all-star compilation album The Hamilton Mixtape debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, earning 187,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Dec. 8, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 169,000 were in traditional album sales. The album — inspired by the runaway hit Broadway show Hamilton: An American Musical -— consists of covers of songs from the show and songs inspired by the production. Among the guests on the album: Sia, John Legend, Kelly Clarkson, Andra Day, Wiz Khalifa and many more.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Dec. 24-dated chart (where The Hamilton Mixtape bows at No. 1) will be posted in full to Billboard’s websites on Tuesday, Dec. 13.
The No. 1-arrival of The Hamilton Mixtape comes following the phenomenal success of the show that inspired the set: Hamilton: An American Musical. The 11-time Tony Award-winning show premiered off-Broadway on Jan. 20, 2015 and moved to Broadway later that year. The show is sold out on Broadway through July of 2017, while its Chicago production (which launched in previews on Sept. 27) is sold out through February of 2017.
The original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton peaked at No. 3 on the July 2-dated chart, and has spent 63 weeks (and counting) on the tally. On the latest chart, it moves 10-11 with 45,000 units (though it is up 33 percent). It was remarkably only the third cast recording to reach the top 10 in the last 50 years, following Hair (No. 1 for 13 weeks in 1969) and The Book of Mormon (No. 3 in 2011). The cast recording of Hamilton has so far sold 876,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music, is the fifth-biggest selling album of 2016, and is the tenth-biggest selling cast recording since Nielsen began…