lol no

oooh weee those saturday american hustle #s

and that 95 rotten tomatoes stuck

Now if Gaga had done this with Born This Way (debuted on the same day as the single), that would be another story.

Justin without over-saturating the media so close to release + incessant Target commercials?? I don't see it.

But yes Eminem . And Adele?

I actually think Timberlake could have matched/surpassed Beyonce with the same strategy earlier this year. Eminem, I see maybe 300-400K+.

Cant wait .

Edit: Oh and The Hobbit SUCKED.

This tbh. It's doing so amazing cos throughout this year, she kept doing things to keep her name in our minds all year round (Superbowl, Pepsi, tour).

Some keep saying oh there's no promo at all which is total bull. Sure, there isn't explicit promo that promotes the album explicitly, but the strategy which I mentioned above is the "promo" in this case. And a surprise release creates tons of buzz, so that worked as massive promo too. And let's not forget the millions of ads and banners from the release day till now.

I just wish some would stop being so naive about this. Sure there was a form of "promo", but it doesn't make her success any less great. What she did was a really impressive and clever marketing strategy and it worked, that is what's so impressive.

I reckon Kanye could have pulled this off pretty well, but Beyonce has definitely had to media talking about her all year (in a good way) so it really worked out for her.

to be honest the GP are driven more by hype than preference. that's why I think this would work with anyone that can create a hype on social media
but what differentiate Beyoncé is that she released a quality album that people will still enjoy when the hype is gone

Eh. Sure. But that was no guarantee people would buy an album they'd heard nothing of...let alone 500k+ purchases.

I agree though, she couldn't have gone from 4 to this without promoting her BRAND in some form, but it's still accurate to say that the ALBUM itself had no promotion because well...it didn't. SOTS and Grown Woman didn't even make it on.

I think the 17 videos with the purchase is really helping it sell. This generation loves music videos. I doubt she would sell this much if it was just the music. Mostly because her material is weak af.

The album did have promotion though. A brilliant kind of promotion. And don't be deceived. Buying all the banners on iTunes alone is probably more expensive than normal promotional tactics to begin with, but you can be sure Beyonce's team didn't actually pay for it.

It would've DEFINITELY worked for Eminem and especially JT after such long breaks.

Gaga on the other hand could have never pulled it off because noone from the GP cares about her, I've actually seen people in real life talking about Beyonce's new album and all the videos whereas if Gaga was to release it out of the blue like that, only her fans would care and freak out.

People were genuinely anticipating new JT music in early Jan though.
Suit n Tie nearly destroyed his momentum, so cutting it out of the equation and going str8 to the album would've been just as massive.

True. So I say it's a mixture of factors, but it's just naive to think that it's 100% Bey's power or else all her albums should be selling like this too.

Yes, the album itself didn't have promotion until it got released. I agree on that. Whatever happened before it was released, was more of promoting Beyonce herself. So when she suddenly drops the album and she rolls out all that banners and ads, it feels as though like a cultural phenomenon is taking place.

Beyonce's been on a self-promotion campaign this entire year.
So the project itself may not have had promo, but Brand Beyonce sure did. It's all quite genius really.

Gaga was on top when she did Swinefest imo. Its the farkery in between that ruined her. ARTPOP is a great album with strong material. If she hadn't taken herself too seriously and just been downright weird psycho bitch this could have been her comeback.

The new BEYONCE prediction.

She could've done 1 Million if she had a full week.

I hope this will give the girls the wake up call that they obviously need! because Prism, ARTPOP, Britney John are disgusting! I don't know how 3 of the biggest popstars around atm could release bad albums so close to each others