Is Rihanna experiencing her first flop? It is reported that her Anti sold less then 1000 copies in the USA.
According to the NYTimes, despite a sponsorship deal with Samsung in which one million copies were given away to fans,with Tidal saying it had sold 484,833 downloads of the album, and that the album was streamed 5.6 million times on its service, “Anti” had a low start on the Billboard album chart this week, opening at No. 27 Rihanna’s lowest opening chart position.
Nielsen reported that the album sold fewer than 1,000 copies in the United States; a subscriber to its service who declined to be identified because the data is private, said that the number of albums sold was 460. The album also had 4.2 million streams and 126,000 sales of individual tracks, according to data from Nielsen, whose accounting week goes through the end of Thursday.
Despite the low initial sales, the album quickly reached No. 1 on iTunes’s internal charts, and industry sales executives predict that “Anti” could sell up to 130,000 copies in its first full week of sales, which would be reflected on next week’s chart.
Either way, Rihanna’s album did not have the blockbuster chart opening that she is accustomed to; her last album, “Unapologetic,” from late 2012, opened at No. 1, and each of her seven earlier studio albums had opened in the Top 10. Her single “Work” opened at No. 9 on the Hot 100.
