SABRINA TAKES #1 IN ULTIMATE SQUEAKER

UPDATE: Island's Sabrina Carpenter has prevailed after a protracted chart battle with Cactus Jack/Epic's Travis Scott, taking 362k over Scott's 361k (the overwhelming majority of which was in pure album sales).

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The history of the charts is also a history of skullduggery. Back in the bad old days, terms like “bagman,” “free goods” and “boxes of cleans” were bandied about as labels jockeyed for chart advantage in an era of virtually zero transparency. (If you are old enough to remember those terms, we hope you’re remembering to take your fiber supplements.)

Chart manipulation in the present era requires a different set of licit, illicit and semi-licit shenanigans. The difference between cheating and “outside-the-box marketing” often depends on a rather nebulous set of rules.

Which brings us to the wildly contentious chart battle between Sabrina Carpenter (on Imran Majid and Justin Eshak’s Island) and Travis Scott (on Cactus Jack via Sylvia Rhone and Zeke Lewis’ Epic).

Carpenter’s new album, Short n’ Sweet, buoyed by two of the year’s biggest singles, was expected to coast to #1. Then Scott put out a 10-year-old mixtape, DAYS BEFORE RODEO (which originally appeared on SoundCloud), and challenged her for the top spot on the Billboard chart as each approached 350k in their opening frames.

The chart has become so easily manipulated that Travis, manager David Stromberg (pictured) and Sony (with Darren Stupak running point) battled Island's Majid, Eshak and SVP Commerce Marshall Nolan as well as REPUBLIC CORPS’ Lipman brothers and Jim Roppo (also pictured) all weekend as they awaited indie-retail numbers that would give a 10th-inning advantage to one of the combatants.

Exclusive signed digital copies and the late-in-the-week arrival of more vintage Scott material from the vaults were key to Team Travis’ overtime campaign while quarterback Stromberg and his squad pushed for those crucial points.

Depending on Travis’ final digital-album sales, which hit 300k+ over the weekend, that total could be greater than the rest of the industry’s total digital-album sales for the previous week. All digital sales, incidentally, were priced at $4.99.

The challenges to both opponents' claims of legitimacy have prolonged the outcome of this chart battle. How much of this bounty will be included in the final tally? Will any be tossed? We have no idea. It’s clear that if this were determined by streaming alone, Carpenter would take the chart crown in a walk. But Scott, arguably the only hip-hop artist other than Kendrick Lamar and Future who can move the marketplace right now, is (along with his formidable team) a fierce competitor.

Republic, of course, is no stranger to retail surprises that have earned them a come-from-behind chart victory—just ask Billie Eilish, Zach Bryan or Gracie Abrams.

We await the call from the refs—especially if there are any flags on the play. Stay tuned.