Without Radio Play, Billie Eilish Zooms To No. 1

Billie. Eilish’s debut album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” moved more than 313,000 copies in the U.S. in its first week ending April 4, according to Nielsen Music. That was without a major radio hit—typically the main driver of a pop-music breakthrough.

The Wall Street Journal reports the success earned the 17-year-old the No.1 slot on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and the second-largest week of any album for 2019. Nielsen measures total consumption, including sales and streams of music.

Since Eilish signed with Interscope Records 2½ years ago, the label has been developing her streaming success across a collection of early songs—part of what executives say is a strategy to build a career versus a one-hit wonder.

Interscope released individual songs on streaming services and largely eschewed any major push to radio.

With the decline of physical and download sales—where listeners pay to own digital copies of albums or tracks—music-streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music have become the main source of revenue for the recording industry. With streaming, listeners pay a subscription or listen to ads in exchange for online access to essentially all of the world’s music.

Before her album was released March 29, Eilish had sold out concerts from Los Angeles to Tokyo, performed on late-night television and raked in almost 8 billion streams for her music, loosely categorized as “pop,” but which features electronic instruments and hip-hop production from her songwriting partner, producer and older brother, Finneas O’Connell.