Tyler, The Creator Beats Meek Mill Before Potential Tidal Manipulation

Hits Daily Double reports that Tyler, The Creator's album Flower Boy did 104K SPS in its first week,  which is good enough for second on the album chart to Lana Del Rey's Lust For Life (108K.)

It's also solidly better than the 87K Meek Mill's Wins & Losses put up in its first week.

But here's where things get interesting. HDD isn't including the free streams Meek got when he placed his album in front of Tidal's firewall in their accounting.

They explain why:

Atlantic’s Meek Mill, on the other hand, ruffled some feathers when Wins & Losses, which bows at #3 with nearly 87k, was put up in front of Tidal’s paywall. Counting these streams, as Billboard apparently plans to do, would represent a reckless and absurd acceptance of blatant chart manipulation. Remember: These free streams generate no revenue and thus equate to free goods, making them ineligible for chart inclusion. Also, the presence of the album in front of the paywall opens the way for unlimited use of bots to drive up streaming totals, unencumbered by accounts or logins. Knowing that—and since these streams were not provided to our chart partner, BuzzAngle Music—we are not counting them.

[Related: Tyler, The Creator Accuses Meek Mill and Tidal of cheating.]

#tylerthecreator wants the #1 spot on the charts.. he says TIDAL might be cheating to finesse him out of that spot. Right now he's only pacing 10,000 off the #1 spot.

A post shared by DJ Akademiks (@akadmiks) on Jul 26, 2017 at 10:04pm PDT

Billboard -- which is considered the chart "bible" -- will probably use those free streams in their accounting, which will come later this weekend. We won't know if the free spins are enough to bump Meek up the chart until then.

Industry insiders believe Tidal has already inflated the numbers of JAY-Z and DJ Khaled’s recent albums, and HDD reports “there is a growing call from the industry to boot Tidal as a reporter to SoundScan.”