Streaming activity helps keep Drake's 'Views' atop Billboard 200

[July 26, 2016]    By Piya Sinha-Roy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Strong streaming activity helped keep Canadian R&B artist Drake at the top of the weekly U.S. Billboard 200 album chart on Monday for an 11th non-consecutive week.

Drake's "Views" sold 16,000 albums, 156,000 songs and was streamed 85 million times across platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify, totaling 89,000 album units according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Billboard said "Views" has the most weeks at No. 1 by a male solo artist since Billy Ray Cyrus' "Some Gave All" in 1992.

The Billboard 200 album chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).

Other new entries in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart included Christian rock group Needtobreathe at No. 2 with "Hardlove" and the 32nd installment of the "Kidz Bop Kids" pop compilation franchise at No. 9.

On the Digital Songs chart, which measures online song sales, Katy Perry's latest upbeat Olympics anthem "Rise" debuted at No. 1 with 137,000 copies sold.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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