For those that still care about album sales and charts, Billboard has officially announced that Lady Gaga has sold 1,108,000 copies of Born This Way in its debut week. That makes it the 8th largest album debut in America since SoundScan started recording album sales in 1991. This also makes it the 17th album to hit the one million mark in its debut week, and the best first week sales of an album since 2005.
Some of this was in part due to Amazon’s bold 99 cent deal. Fans were able to scoop up the digital Deluxe Edition of Born This Way for 99 cents for a limited time. Even though Gaga or Interscope had nothing to do with the deal, it was a big step forward in companies trying to get people to buy music legally. While a substantial percentage of consumers do not value music as much as they once did – in a monetary sense, Amazon was able to appeal to that demographic, and show that people are still willing to buy music if the price is right. The deal also acted as advertisement for their new Cloud service.
Regardless, this is quite the feat given the current climate of the music industry. Listed below are the top 10 albums to have sold a million units in their debut week:
Top first-week sellers
Rank | Artist | Title | Sales
1 ‘N Sync No Strings Attached (2000) 2.42
2 ‘N Sync Celebrity (2001) 1.88
3 Eminem Marshall Mathers LP (2000) 1.76
4 Backstreet Boys Black & Blue (2000) 1.59
5 Britney Spears Oops! … I Did It Again (2000) 1.31
6 50 Cent The Massacre (2005) 1.14
7 Backstreet Boys Millennium (1999) 1.13
— LADY GAGA BORN THIS WAY (2011) 1.10 —
8 Usher Confessions (2004) 1.10
9 Garth Brooks Double Live (1998) 1.09
10 Limp Bizkit Chocolate Starfish (2000) 1.05
