Rihanna’s ‘Anti’ Sells Fewer Than 1,000 Copies in U.S

The “Work” singer released her eighth record early on Tidal last week after it accidentally leaked online.

It was soon reported that she had shifted nearly 1.5 million copies in just 15 hours, but there was a catch. Phone company Samsung had bought a million copies to give away free to customers as part of a promotional deal.

But despite those big numbers, “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.

One explanation for the low sales number for “Anti” comes from Tidal itself. 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.

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.

NYtimes reportage