"Gigaton" and its tracks on the charts

The Juggler said:

So alternative adults love them some Dance of the Clairvoyants. 

What is that, like the Spectrum on Sirius or something?

No, it's a very small panel of radio stations like KFOG in San Francisco, about 30 stations in total if I recall correctly.  To put it in perspective, a few weeks ago (the last time I looked at this particular bit of data), the most-played song at Triple-A was spun a total of 579 times in a week.*  The most-played song at CHR (contemporary hit radio a.k.a. "top 40") was spun over 18,000 times in a week (because there are many more CHR stations, generally at least two in every major market).

*So you can estimate that "Dance of the Clairvoyants" was played about 500 times in aggregate on these radio stations last week.  Having a hit at Triple A is like being a big fish in a very small pond.  (Although it's worth noting that the Hot 100 is so skewed to streaming now that it is not exactly representative of what people are listening to.  The number one song for the last 11 weeks has been Roddy Ricch's "The Box."  I regularly ask people from their 20s through their 60s what they think of this song, and almost none of them has ever heard of it or of Ricch.  The Hot 100 is weighted about 82 percent to streaming even though the radio audience is still larger than the streaming audience.  It's crazy.  It's supposed to be an all-genre chart that casts a wide net, but instead it has ended up very narrowly reflecting younger and more urban (i.e., cities-- not "urban" as code for "black" as used in other radio contexts like "urban contemporary") listeners' tastes.

Updated for week ending April 4, 2020.

Album's release will impact next week's charts.  The album looks like it will debut at No. 2 on Top Album Sales (behind 5 Seconds of Summer), although there is a chance it could debut at No. 1.  The album will likely debut on the Billboard 200 (which incorporates streaming, not just sales) anywhere from No. 4 to No. 7.

Not including Ten, no Pearl Jam studio album has peaked below No. 5 (Riot Act).  So there's a chance this could be Pearl Jam's lowest-charting studio album.  However, bear in mind that every other Pearl Jam studio album debuted before the Billboard 200 factored in streaming, so the real analogue is the Top Album Sales chart, on which Gigaton will definitely debut no lower than No. 2.

Unfortunately, the Billboard 200 formula disadvantages artists who sell disproportionately more physical albums, which includes rock artists.  Rock accounted for over 40 percent of physical album sales in 2019.  The problem is that there is no way for Billboard to track how many times you listen to your CD or vinyl copy of the album.  All they can do is count one sale.  For genres that are more heavily streamed (e.g., hip-hop and pop), each stream is tracked for every album track.  As a result, Pearl Jam is going to sell at least 50 times as many copies of Gigaton as Lil Uzi Vert will sell of his new album this week, but Lil Uzi Vert's album will rank higher because he will have about four times as many streams as Pearl Jam, and streams are weighted more heavily than sales.

Projected Billboard 200:
1. The Weeknd, After Hours: 85-90k total units, 9-12k sales
2. 5 Seconds of Summer, Calm: 75-80k, 60-65k
3. Lil Uzi Vert, Eternal Atake: 75-80k, 1k
4. Pearl Jam, Gigaton: 55-60k, 50-55k
5. Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia: 55-60k, 15-18k
6. Partynextdoor, Partymobile: 50-55k, 3-4k
7. Lil Baby, My Turn: 50-55k, 1-2k
8. Bad Bunny, YHLQMDLG: 45-50k, <1k
9. Roddy Ricch, Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial: 37-42k, <1k
10. Post Malone, Hollywood's Bleeding: 35-40k, 1k

Projected Top Album Sales:
1. 5 Seconds of Summer: 60-65k
2. Pearl Jam: 50-55k
3. Dua Lipa: 15-18k
4. Joyner Lucas, ADHD: 10-13k
5. The Weeknd: 9-12k

With respect to first-week performance, here it is for each studio album:

Ten: did not chart upon release
Vs.: #1
Vitalogy: #55*
No Code: #1
Yield: #2
Binaural: #2
Riot Act: #5
Pearl Jam: #2
Backspacer: #1
Lightning Bolt: #1

* Vitalogy debuted at #55 based solely on vinyl sales.  The vinyl was released two weeks before the CD.  In the second week of vinyl-only release, it fell to #173.  In the first week of CD availability (and third week overall on the chart), the album jumped to #1.

Note: All of the debuts listed above were peaks for the respective albums, except Vitalogy (for the reasons described above) and Ten (which eventually reached #2 when it charted).

Hopefully, I'll get the vinyl number next week.  You're probably right about COVID-19.