It took Beyoncé just three days to become the fastest worldwide selling album ever on iTunes, according to Apple. According to information the company released on Monday, the new album sold 828,773 in its first three days.
The album also broke US album sales with 617,213 sold in those three days. In addition to the record sales, Beyoncé’s album hit No. 1 in 104 countries around the world.
If you remember, Beyoncé decided to release her album exclusively on iTunes—she didn’t even send the songs to be manufactured until after the album hit on iTunes. What this gave Beyoncé is a level of secrecy that few artists have enjoyed in many years.
Typically the press, and public, know about album releases far in advance of their release, effectively ruining any surprise. Sometimes this is done by the artist, but more often, the news comes from a leak.
Apple has proven with the Beyoncé release that an iTunes exclusive release is the way to go. I said last week and I’ll say it again—you are going to see a lot more releases done with Apple this way in the coming months and years.
Update: Apple and Columbia confirmed that Beyonce passed 1 million albums sold worldwide today.
If my math is correct, then Beyoncé just cleared $10.1M for this album this weaken alone. Not too bad. When you consider her only real distribution partner is iTunes, that makes it a very attractive deal. Her gross was about $13.25M and then Apple gets their 30% take. If you consider that Apple may have decreased or even forfeited their 30% for this exclusivity, it’s even more attractive for Beyonce and other artists. As sole distributor, Apple sales more devices and strengthens the iTunes ecosystem.
Of course there is nothing stopping someone to buy it and transfer it to their Android, but the bigger win is for artists wanting a bigger piece of the pie when selling their creative. They are no longer hostage to large labels and media conglomerates – effectively cutting out the middle-men. I’m excited to see how this will play out over the next 10 years as artists gain more and more control, and the industry is further disrupted. I see this also happening to the movie and TV industries as well. Networks and cable beware, your days are numbered.
Amazing! I think this is a great trend to get going. The labels are killing artists, IMHO, so this is going to speak to a lot of upcoming artists.
Do you think it would’ve been the fastest if individual songs were an option?
This was stupid of Beyonce on account of the sheer fact that Android has 80% marketshare. i can guarantee she would have sold 10 million copies in 10 minutes if she released this on the Google play store.
I’m known as the Android apologist by some around these parts but I have to absolutely disagree here.
Google Play Music has less than a year under its belt with a streaming option that probably could have netted 10M plays but not purchases; why buy when you can stream for the same ~$9/mo you already pay?
And, you faithful Android haters, no need to go through the cheap arguments, etc.
I’m amazed that even the videos were shot in secret.
I suspect this will have repercussions for the music biz. No, not so much the iTunes angle, but the fact that it was released with no prior publicity. Publicity costs cut into an album’s profits by quite a bit.
If this proves to be a pattern, where established acts can successfully release without much PR, there will be far less spent in the future.
Just as well, as I question how effective record company PR departments are.
I remember in the 90’s Michael Jackson publicly complaining that his latest album wasn’t doing well and that his label squandered the millions spent on promoting it. Most people brushed it off as MJ was not the artist he used to be, and people weren’t interested. However since his complaints were the first time I heard of that album’s existence, I felt he had a point.
agree, i am annoyed she wont allow us to download the album on google, i am sure as hell not going to itunes to download a song.
I assume that’s sarcasm.
300,000 people have already listened to Beyonce’s album for free on YouTube. Good job Google, what a service to the music industry you provide!! And in the week Google’s content match ID service has been ruining many gaming review channels, ‘full albums’ regularly appear with no problem on YouTube.
She should be getting ad money from it. If it is pirated, report the page you’re viewing to help YouTube fix it and so she gets her due vs complaining here; hint…it won’t help.
I built two different live streaming sites and managing DMCA is tough. A fully automated system will be either too critical or not enough.
Despite your certainty, no one has yet to successfully release an “Android first” album. I wonder why. Hm.