Rihanna’s new album ANTI has already caused it share of controversy, and it’s not because of the music that’s on the record.
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Of Anti’s 1.4 million downloads, only 400,000 will count as actual sales in the eyes of the Billboard 200.
Though critical reception of Rihanna’s new album Anti has been largely positive, the sales numbers are not quite as easy to interpret. “They are trying to pass blame for their own incompetence”. The New York Times reports that chart figures service Nielsen says the album sold less than 1,000 copies in the US.
Last week, TIDAL’s director of marketing, Grace Kim, told SPIN, “Look, we know what happened here, in the sense that unfortunately we still rely on systems, and there was a system error”. She later clarified the comment, saying she was referring to an error by the album’s distributor-Universal Music Group (UMG). Tidal reported that it had sold a further 484,833 downloads, and that it was streamed more than 5.6 million times. On Monday, a spokesman for the company, Dan Roberti, said that the album was put on sale late Thursday, after Samsung’s exclusive giveaway period ended, giving the album just a few hours to rack up sales for the week.
On Friday, Jan. 29, ANTI became available for purchase on the Tidal store, along with iTunes and Google Play.
Rihanna surprised the world by unveiling her new album ANTI for free last week – but there’s been some drama after it was leaked hours early.
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But because single sales count toward an album’s chart position, it appears that Anti’s Drake-featuring lead single “Work”, did the real heavy lifting: The song moved 126,000 units. It didn’t take fans long to figure out that the gilded headphones were designed by Dolce & Gabanna in a special collaboration with Frends. More importantly, would this affect Adele’s dream to have Rihanna in her squad?
