After much eager anticipation and a totally botched release, Rihanna’s long-awaited eighth album, ANTi, finally founds its way into the arms of fans last week, quickly going achieving platinum sales.
The Barbadian pop superstar’s latest album was accidentally uploaded to streaming service Tidal before being quickly removed and made officially available in order to prevent illegal downloads of the leak.
As News Corp notes, the album’s release was certainly haphazard, particularly for such a big release, and it already appears to have cost Rihanna early sales, despite its alleged status as a ‘platinum’ album.
Tidal, the streaming service made famous after it was purchased by Jay-Z and promoted with an oddly Illuminati-esque ad campaign, reported more than one million sales for ANTi in its first few days of release.
The issue with that figure is that the album was, as we mentioned, given away fro free for a limited time with the use of a special code, so the vast majority of those ‘sales’ were in fact free downloads.
Rihanna’s corporate sponsor, Samsung, actually bought the one million copies that were sold and then gave them to listeners for free. Combine that with the fans who only streamed the album and a different picture begins to emerge.
According to Billboard, ANTi debuted at a very respectable Number 27 after its first few days of sale. This chart position was achieved solely through physical sales, as free downloads and the album’s four million streams aren’t counted by Billboard.
[include_post id=”470201″]
So what are ANTi‘s physical sales? Rihanna’s eighth album reportedly moved less than 1,000 units, just 460 if we don’t count the one million purchased by Samsung, which Billboard and Nielsen don’t, but the RIAA do.
So did ANTi go platinum? Sort of. According to the RIAA, Rihanna’s eighth album is indeed platinum, but if we take a look at the far more accurate Billboard and Nielsen charts, it hasn’t even moved 500 units yet.
However, this doesn’t necessarily make ANTi a flop. It’s expected to chart highly in the UK and Australia this week thanks to digital sales alone (not free downloads) and will be available for physical release this Friday, which will give it a further shot in the arm.
