Many people were critical of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way‘s incredible first-week sales of 1,108,000 copies sold, as 440,000 of those albums were sold through Amazon.com, and only for 99 cents. Though that may have been a genius marketing strategy at the time to secure an impressive first-week figure, Billboard is changing its rules so that scoring a #1 album by lowering the price of your LP will be a thing of the past.
From Billboard, “Unit sales for albums priced below $3.49 during their first four weeks of release will not be eligible for inclusion on the Billboard album charts and will not count towards sales data presented by Nielsen SoundScan. The rule also applies to reissued titles.”
Though the publication does not specifically call out Gaga’s Born This Way, it’s fairly obvious this is due to the pop star’s strategy of selling her album for less than a buck on Amazon — and in some cases, for free. (However, even if you subtracted Born This Way‘s entire first week’s worth of sales at that particular digital retailer, the album still would have sold 668,000 copies, landing it at the top of that week’s charts regardless.)
This is not the first time a rule put in place by a major music agency has been allegefly affected by something to do with Gaga — the Grammys changed the eligibility rules for being nominated for Best New Artist after the singer was shut-out of the race due to a prior nomination in the Dance category.
Billboard‘s new rule change will take place beginning November 21, which sees album releases from the likes of Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, James Durbin, Nickelback and Chris Daughtry, as well as Michael Jackson (his IMMORTAL soundtrack).
But wasn’t that the old rule that they specifically changed to allow Gaga’s record?!
You’re not acknowledging that this was Amazon idea, not Gaga’s. Amazon bought the albums at full price.
I still cannot believe people complained when Gaga sold her album for 99 cents. Sure it may be a marketing strategy but who cares, in this economy, that is practically a steal and people should be thanking her.
BTW will always be that *asterisk album dot dot dot
one needs to realize without the 99 cent sale this album doesn’t really sell that much.
ZMH: “one needs to realize without the 99 cent sale this album doesn’t really sell that much.”
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Obviously. That’s why as of early October 2011, it has sold 8,000,000+ copies worldwide. (just over four and a half months of it being released).
One needs to realize that without doing research, one can look like an idiot.
LOL! Amazon and Interscope SAID that about the purchase of the albums for full price,but unless Billboard saw a CHECK for the 7 million or so Amazon would have had to pay, no way should they have believe this CON GAME! Billboard tarnished its image by accepting those sales,especially since Gaga’s camp tried to have a complete giveaway with Best Buy count BEFORE the Amazon scheme,and any sales bundled in a promotion for free do not count under Billboard’s own rules. It was obvious Chart manipulation and never should have been accepted by Billboard. Now confidence in Billboard is at an all time low. Billboard needs to tighten up all policies and also they need to look at downloads too, cause there is quite an ability to cheat on those if you just think about it! All these singles but then CD sales for some artists do not keep pace at all with their huge singles….never gonna happen without some cheating. It is what it is….whole way sales are counted needs to be rethought…
Born This Way didn’t even NEED to be sold for .99 a pop to reach its number 1 spot on the album charts after its debut week. Just saying. It easily earned that spot with its original merits.