Why is Drake outselling Beyoncé?

How's the view from the top of the charts?

Ask Drake, who scored the year's biggest sales week so far with Views, his sixth No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. In the week since the set's release on iTunes and Apple Music, it has sold just over 1 million equivalent album units, according to Nielsen Music. That total includes pure album sales (852,000 copies), song sales (240,000 downloads) and, most impressively, streams (a record-breaking 245.1 million).

"It's a combination of an artist at the very top of the game and an artist who fits in with the right type of genre for that type of consumer," says David Bakula, Nielsen Entertainment's senior vice president of analytics. "Obviously, the hip-hop and R&B fan is a very stream-heavy consumer. You get a platform that has as broad a reach as Apple does, and those are the ingredients for something that is record-breaking."

The rapper crushes a streaming record set by Beyoncé just a week earlier, when her much-discussed Lemonade started with 115 million plays on Tidal. Since its debut as a HBO special two weeks ago, Lemonade has sold 974,000 equivalent album units through retailers such as iTunes, Amazon and Tidal (681,000 of which were pure album sales).

That Drake has already managed to sell in one week what Beyoncé has in two is puzzling to industry observers, especially considering the hype of the pop star's surprise release and pointed lyrics about alleged cheating.

"I do find that surprising and I'm not sure that I have an explanation for it," says Billboard senior editor Jem Aswad. One reason could be that Drake has stayed front of mind the past year with a steady stream of mixtapes (If You're Reading This It's Too Late,What A Time to Be Alive) and songs (Hotline Bling, Rihanna's Work and One Dance, which just hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100). Meanwhile, Beyoncé only released one single, Formation, which peaked at No. 10 on the Hot 100.

"Drake has had a couple of radio hits recently, and if you think about it, Beyoncé hasn’t had one for a long time," Aswad says. (The last was Drunk in Love with Jay Z, which hit No. 2 in 2014). "You can make the leap that her audience is aging a little bit. It also just goes back to the fact that Drake’s fan base is broader, younger and more motivated."

Despite trailing Views, Lemonade has managed impressive numbers. The album set a Billboard record when all 12 songs debuted in the Hot 100 — three of which (Formation, Hold Up and Sorry) are in the top 10 best-selling tracks this week. Album sales are also about on-par with Beyoncé's self-titled surprise album, which sold 991,000 copies in its first 10 days in December 2013, with the added benefit of the Christmas holiday.

"She has the very difficult feat of constantly trying to top herself," Aswad says. "As does Drake, but it must be really difficult to do something completely unprecedented every single time."

Despite new and upcoming releases from Radiohead, Meghan Trainor and Ariana Grande, "I don't really see anything biting into their sales," Aswad says. Plus, with Beyoncé's ongoing Formation world tour, and Drake embarking on his Summer Sixteen trek in July, "touring is going to keep both records going for a long time."