Beyoncé surprised the world but dropping her fifth studio album on iTunes without warning. With a simple Instagram video, Beyoncé released a 14 track, 17 video visual album to her fans. Although the album drop with no previous promotion, Beyoncé albums sales reached over 80,000 in three hours. Check out this statement from Billboard:
In just a three-hour sales window (closing at midnight Friday PT), “Beyonce” reportedly sold over 80,000 copies, according to industry sources. It’s still too early to judge what the set will do over the full three days left in the sales tracking week (which ends Sunday night), but with prior projected leader, “Blame It All On My Roots: Five Decades Of Influences” by Garth Brooks, estimated to shift 150,000-160,000 units, Beyonce is already halfway to that sum. And in the time it would take someone to fly from New York to Miami.
The album release was so heavily guarded, that reportedly only a dozen or so members of her Sony Records family were even aware of the set being pushed to iTunes yesterday evening.
Beyonce’s last studio set “4” sold 310,000 in its debut week in July of 2011, but that was with a full sales week and a marketing/media push leading up to the release. It is an interesting commentary on the influence of social media in today’s world if “Beyonce” can come close to that sum with just social buzz driving the project instead of weeks of traditional media promotion normally part of the album release playbook.
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Who Drops An Album With No Promo At 11p? Beyonce!!!
