Ariana Grande's album 'Positions' hits #1 on Billboard 200 without bundles.

It must be quite baffling for Ariana Grande now that her name has become synonymous with the word "bundles." Her album 'Positions' serves as her fifth one to top the Billboard 200 charts. This being achieved with 174,000 equivalent album units (42,000 of those being pure sales). 

The project also has the highest one-week total for an album since bundles stopped factoring into chart and sales rankings. Interestingly, Billboard went out of their way to dedicate an entire article explaining her current album figures being achieved purely from streaming and sales. Maybe they would not have had to do that if she wasn't one of those artists that heavily benefited from tour/album/merch bundles. Of course this explains why her recent numbers are almost HALF of what she achieved with last album 'Thank You, Next.' Even if bundles were still allowed, Ariana would not have had much use for them anyway due to the covid-19 pandemic. 

That said, congrats on the #1. 'Positions' was initially predicted to sell 260K, which would have been amazing given that she only announced her album one week before it's release. Even with that one weeks notice, Ariana's current numbers are still very much respectable during a pandemic, and an election.

According to Billboard, Ariana debuts another #1 in less than two years and three months, making it the fastest accumulation of three #1 studio albums ever by a woman. 
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