If you're a follower of out weekly series breaking down the Top 10 list for the Billboard Digital Downloads chart, you'll be just as happy as we are to see some variety enter the list. We can't say for sure what now. 2-10 will be, but we can all but guarantee that for the first time in 12 weeks, Pharrell Williams and "Happy" will not be the most downloaded track for the week. No offense to Williams, but we've gotten really tired of using the same photo with the story, so this week we'll be giving thanks to Ariana Grande and her single "Problem."
Industry forecasters have predicted a huge final tally for the track: more than 425,000 downloads. Forecasters can be dramatically off on their projections at times, but it's tough to imagine that the standard deviation for their estimate is so large that Williams could still trump Grande. "Happy" moved 208,000 downloads during the last charting period and that was a continuation of a downwards trend. It's tough to see the song get even half of Grande's sales results this week.
If the projections are spot on, "Problems" will land in the Top 10 for highest debuting songs ever (admittedly, Nielsen has only been tracking downloads since 2003). It would place Grande at the no. 4 highest debut for a female performer, following Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" (623,000 downloads), Katy Perry's "Roar" and Lady Gaga's "Born This Way." Perry's track was the last song to debut with more than 400,000 downloads when it dropped during August of 2013.
"Problems" will be in it for the long run if it wants to catch "Happy's" sales total however.
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