‘Billboard 200’ Album Chart: Yay Shawn Mendes, Nay Taylor Swift

Billboard released their Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday morning and Shawn Mendes came out a winner. Billboard describes Mendes‘ victory.

“Sixteen-year old Shawn Mendes has grown from Vine stardom to topping the Billboard 200 chart, as his debut full-length album Handwritten arrives at No. 1. The set, which was released on April 14 through Island Records, starts with 119,000 units earned in the week ending April 19, according to Nielsen Music.”

Billboard notes that Shawn Mendes actually sold 106,000 copies, but since they have changed their chart policy and allow streaming to add to sales, 119,000 units were counted. Mendes is the youngest artist to top the Billboard 200 chart since 2010, when Justin Bieber debuted at the top with My World 2.0. It’s quite a great achievement.

Now, for the bad news: Taylor Swift drops out of the top five for the first time in 25 weeks. She sold 38,000 albums this week, down 13 percent from last week. If Taylor Swift put her album on Spotify, she would no doubt still be in the top five. Time Magazine recently asked Taylor Swift why she left the popular music streaming service.

“Well, they can still listen to my music if they get it on iTunes. I’m always up for trying something. And I tried it and I didn’t like the way it felt. I think there should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify. Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things. They keep running towards streaming, which is, for the most part, what has been shrinking the numbers of paid album sales.”

Taylor Swift’s 1989 album has produced two number one singles, “Shake it Off” and “Blank Space.” Her latest single, “Style,” has peaked at No. 6. Swift’s next single will likely be “Bad Blood,” and a video for the song has already been filmed, according to Billboard.

“No bad blood among Taylor Swift’s friends. Swift reportedly recruited a few of her BFFs to help film a music video for her song ‘Bad Blood,’ which will presumably be the next single from 1989 but has not yet been announced. Details are scarce about the possible video, but photos surfaced online over the weekend that seem to show supermodel Cara Delevingne and others on set shooting the vid, all wearing futuristic hair and makeup.”

While Shawn Mendes has the No. 1 album this week, Taylor Swift shouldn’t sweat. She has the best selling album of the past year. If fact, Taylor Swift is one of the only artists who is still making a lot of money from album sales. It would be great to see Taylor Swift duet with Shawn Mendes in the near future.

[Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images]