Billboard reports that Dirty Money's "Last Train to Paris" will place seventh on tomorrow's Billboard 200 chart, having sold 101,000 units.

If you're a fan, you may have seen some album sales figures estimated and then reported by HITS Daily Double and then passed around online. First, they reported that, based on first day sales, the album would sell 60,000 to 65,000 units. And, of course, some people jumped on those and trumpeted the album as a flop.

Then, HITS Daily Double reported that final sales for the album were 87,380 and that it would debut at #10. Again, some people reported that.

You may have noticed that, here at Bad Boy Blog, we didn't report any of these figures. It wasn't because I didn't see them, it was because I felt they were premature. And, sure enough, the final number is 101,000 units, 36,000 more than the top of that initial estimate and 13,620 units more than that "final" report. And instead of debuting at #10, it debuts at #7. That is a sizable difference.

Even though this does represent the lowest debut for a Diddy album, in both position and sales, I believe that you have to consider this debut performance at least a modest success. For three reasons.

First, Diddy's last album, "Press Play," debuted at #1 and sold 176,000 units in October of 2006, more than four years ago. But, since that point, record sales have continued to decline. Here are the overall, total album sales for the last four complete years, as tracked by Nielsen SoundScan:

2009: 373.9 million units
2008: 428 million units
2007: 505.5 million units
2006: 588.2 million units

Given these numbers, and simple math, we can calculate that selling 176,000 albums in 2006 is the same as selling 111,878 units in 2009. On top of that, Billboard reports that year to date album sales for 2010, as compared to last year, are down 13%. If we adjust for that 13%, we find that selling 176,000 units in 2006 is the same as selling 97,334 units in 2010. So, given where music sales are right now, "Last Train to Paris" did comparably as well as "Press Play," strictly on a numbers basis.

Second, this was a very competitive week to launch an album. You had major new releases from Michael Jackson, R. Kelly and Ciara (who ended up not faring as well), in addition to powerful, still-charting albums from current sales juggernauts like Taylor Swift, Susan Boyle, Nicki Minaj and more.

Third, the fact is that "Last Train to Paris" is a different type of album. Every album Diddy releases is different, but this one - in personnel, content, marketing, message and expressed vision - represents a shift. And while, as a fan, I was certainly hoping it would be #1 in the opening week, my realistic and critical (though still optimistic) expectations were closer to where it actually ended up.

So, congratulations to Diddy, Dirty Money and everyone involved in the process of releasing and marketing "Last Train to Paris." As a writer here at Bad Boy Blog, I have to write about sales and provide an analysis such as this. As a fan, sales only matter so much for what is my album of the year.