Travis Scott's Team Objects To His Recent Mixtape Release Days before the rodeo Behind Sabrina Carpenter Short and sweet On the Billboard 200, Billboard and Luminate described the sales measurement as “unreliable and incomplete”. The magazine claimed that approximately 1,300 units sold ahead of schedule were not counted towards first-week sales.
The letter, sent by an unnamed representative at Cactus Jack Records and Scott's retailer to Luminate – the data company that powers the charts – claims that Scott (who was recorded as having just over 361,000 sales) had enough units to beat Carpenter's 362,000 sales to become number one.
“This was never about Travis vs. Sabrina — it was about the integrity of the process and the questionable tactics used to map America,” says Travis Scott’s rep. Rolling Stone. “This could happen to any artist.”
In the lengthy letter, the Cactus Jack actor accused Billboard magazine of 200 Schematic of the process of “arbitrarily eliminating verified sales from trusted providers”, using the “old independent retail weighting process[es]”, and making decisions that were “inconsistent with historical precedent.” She also criticized one Luminate employee for his previous work at Carpenter's Island Records.
“With the race so close – within 1,000 units – we are calling on the organization charged with reporting data fairly and transparently to finally consider this set of facts and reconsider its position on counting the 1,291 verified units,” the letter reads.
Billboard spokesperson at PMC, Rolling StoneThe parent company of ', says Rolling Stone That the billboard “stands”[s] “Behind the chart data and our methodology.”
The message included details of an alleged conversation with Tommy Stallknecht, CEO of Single, which operates Shopify, about an “extremely high volume of orders” after a deluxe version was released at 11:20 p.m. before the midnight sales cutoff.
In the screenshots, they have been reviewed but not verified by Rolling StoneStalknecht claims that nearly 1,300 units were sold in the last 15 minutes of the hour, which would have put Scott in first place. The letter alleges that Luminate failed to accept the sales in a timely manner. At the time, the representative who sent the letter said in text messages that those sales were “not worth the headache” of fighting to get them added.
Stalknecht declined to comment, saying: Rolling Stone“We do not comment on our clients' businesses.”
Over the weekend, when the numbers were tallied, the message claimed that Scott's team reached out to Luminate multiple times about adding the units, and the company “appeared to have neither responded nor acknowledged receipt of the data.” The message claims that they ran into “the exact same issue” when Scott released Utopia In 2023, Luminate was reinstated for a certain number of sales. “Everyone was in the dark from Luminate all weekend,” the message read.
A Luminate representative did not immediately respond. Rolling StoneAsked to comment on the message, although they confirmed that eagleLuminet, which first reported the story, said the company received a letter from a record label objecting to the chart. “We are confident that our numbers are correct according to our processes and methodology,” Luminet told the newspaper.
The letter also questioned the “weight” of Luminate’s independent retail sales, which they said gave Carpenter a bump over Scott this week, and which “offers no option” for transparency. “This clearly resulted in Sabrina’s final unit count being over Travis by an amount roughly equivalent to the number of units we accidentally ‘lost’ that would have been counted in the first week,” the letter said.
Finally, the letter mentioned a Luminate employee, whose LinkedIn profile shows he has worked at Sabrina's Island Records for the past three years, questioning the employee's “objectivity.”
“This is particularly concerning given that he had a legitimate and proven move with her signing to Island in early 2021 while he was still employed by the company (which continued until May 2021),” the letter said, adding that “logic dictates” that the employee “has a personal incentive to encourage an artist who signed with his former employer during his tenure to ‘win’ the race this week.”
Representatives for Sabrina Carpenter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This article was updated at 9:05 p.m. ET on September 6 to include a statement from Billboard.
