Rihanna's latest album only sold 460 copies in a day thanks to giveaways and streaming
Following an interactive marketing campaign and an accidental album leak on Tidal, her seventh album was officially released Wednesday, January 27, on the streaming service in which she's a partner along with Jay Z.
The album debuted at No. 27 on the Billboard 200, selling less than 1,000 copies in the United States in its first day on sale. According to the New York Times, a source with knowledge of the Nielsen numbers said only 460 albums were sold on that Thursday.
But through Rihanna's sponsorship deal with Samsung, 1.47 million copies of "Anti" were handed out as free downloads to fans, and the album has been streamed 5.6 million times, according to Tidal.
Data from Nielsen says that the album had been streamed 4.7 million times by the end of the January 28.
The album was released commercially Thursday, following the giveaway. Billboard doesn't include free downloads on its chart ranking, so it had only been on sale for a few hours when Billboard released the list, which tracks sales Friday through Thursday of each week.