Would BEYONCÉ have broken the record for highest debut by a female artist if she had had a full week of sales and a traditional release?
Some people claim that Beyoncé would have broken the record for highest debut on the BB200 if she had had a full week of sales and her album, BEYONCÉ, had been released at all retailers, not just iTunes. The record is currently held by the RIAA Diamond Certified, number 6 album of the decade, sophomore album of Britney Spears, Oops!... I Did It Again. Oops!... I Did It Again sold 1,319,000 copies in its first week.
Some things to consider:
- BEYONCÉ debuted on the BB200 with
three-day sales of 617,213 digital copies.
- It took BEYONCÉ
three weeks to sell 1.3 million copies, still slightly less than the amount needed to break the record. It is also important to note that
physical copies were available at this point. (Source:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/ne...oard-200-chart)
- Most physical retailers received the album around Friday, Dec. 20, with a notable exclusion being Target. Billboard estimates that
iTunes is the largest seller of music in the U.S., with about a 41% share of the market in 2012.
Walmart had 10%, while
Amazon (9%) and
Target (5%) were the third and fourth-largest sellers, respectively. (Source:
http://www.billboard.com/biz/article...nces-new-album)
This brings us to the question at hand: Would
BEYONCÉ have broken the record for highest debut by a female artist if she had had a full week of sales and sold through all retailers? Would the hype combined with a full first week of sales have been enough? Would the extra 10% and 5% of the music market from Walmart and Target respectively have been enough to push the album if it had been released physically during its first week? Or would a release to all retailers have killed the hype, possibly even causing the album to sell less than it did?
TO CLEAR UP CONFUSION: By "traditional release" I just meant that if the album had been released to all retailers, both physically and digitally, not just exclusively to iTunes. I edited the original post and replaced "traditional release" to "release to all retailers."
