Carnival of Soul

The veteran hard rock band Slipknot bested the veteran rapper Rick Ross on the Billboard album chart this week, in a battle of sales vs. streaming.

“We Are Not Your Kind,” Slipknot’s sixth album and its third to hit No. 1, benefited from the now-common tactic of pairing a built-in album-redemption offer with concert tickets, leading to sales of 102,000 in the album’s first week, according to Nielsen. Even when combined with only 19 million song streams, Slipknot’s total album activity reached 118,000 units, giving it a comfortable margin atop the Billboard 200.

Behind Slipknot are two rap albums that found their audiences primarily on streaming services. “Port of Miami 2,” Rick Ross’s sequel to his 2006 debut album, had 68 million streams in its debut week, reaching 80,000 units in total, including 25,000 in sales. “!” by the SoundCloud graduate Trippie Redd lands at No. 3 with 62 million streams and 7,000 in sales, or 51,000 units by the industry’s math.

No other new album reached the Top 25. Rounding out the Top 5 are the chart fixtures Billie Eilish — whose “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” is hanging around at No. 4 in its 20th week out — and Ed Sheeran, whose “No.6 Collaborations Project” is No. 5 in its fifth week. Both the Eilish and Sheeran albums were streamed about 45 million times.

The more seismic chart shift this week is on the singles front — the Billboard Hot 100 — where Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” had its record-setting, 19-week run at No. 1 ended by Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” The Eilish single set its own record by sitting at No. 2 for nine weeks before reaching the top spot, the longest-ever wait.

“Bad Guy” was streamed 39 million times last week, according to Nielsen, compared to 53 million for “Old Town Road,” but found its edge on the radio, where the Eilish song had 15,000 spins and “Old Town Road” had 5,000.