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Artist News
Beyonce sold a fair few copies of her new album last week
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 17 December 2013
So, apparently releasing your new album without warning and through just one retailer is the way to go if you want get rich quick, and who doesn’t want to do that?
It’s also worth nothing that charging £12.99 and making your new record only available as a fourteen song/seventeen video set (forcing people downloading to their phones to delete all manner of apps and other music to make room) doesn’t seem to be much of a barrier to sales either. At least not if you’re Beyonce. I should probably have mentioned that you need to be Beyonce for all this to work earlier.
Yes, Apple has confirmed that Beyonce sold 828,773 copies of her ‘surprise’ eponymous album in its first three days on sale, breaking all previous records on the download store and becoming the second biggest selling of the year via the download store. 68,000 of those downloads were sold in the UK, while the bulk, 617,213, were purchased by people in the US.
As previously reported, although the album was known to be in the works (for quite some time), it was indeed a surprise when Beyonce suddenly announced that it was not only finished but available via iTunes on Friday morning.
The album is expected to go on sale on CD, as well as arriving on streaming services, later this week, though US retailer Target has said it won’t stock it as a result of the firm’s famous Sour Grapes Policy – the “release digitally first, and we won’t stock your CD” clause.
That is perhaps a little hypocritical, given Target has a long history of doing its own exclusivity deals with artists, including special editions of previous Beyonce albums with extra tracks only available via the retailer. “I put so much into my new album, and only Target gives you all of it”, Mrs Carter once proclaimed. Not this time, Bey.
