Do you think some labels (or even artists) purchase an artist's album to make a particular album go #1 or buy a tonne (maybe even millions) of copies to make the aritst look huger than what they are?

Discuss

Some of them do, but I doubt they'd buy more than 50k or something.

Yes, but I don't think they buy millions. Maybe around 70K max

They definitely do sometimes, hence the enormous second-week drops.

Maybe they can get some kind of deal to get albums cheaper than the retail price or something - if they were to buy more than 50k, of course.

yup
so do artists

Does anyone have any albums they'd like to accuse of doing this?

Fearless

Reasons?

Taylor better use her coins to make sure T6 snatches a 4m debut

If they have the budget to buy their albums why don't they use them to do more promo for the artist lol sis

Maybe.

I can only talk about one. Lil Wayne's Tha Charter 4 was definitely one of them.

In Korea and Japan they definitely do, I wouldn't be that surprised if it happens in the West as well.

1989

No. They'd be able to find you rather easily with NSS and omit your sales, so it would be pointless.

Instead, they get around that with discounts and gimmicks like attached event tickets and what-not.
That's because artists have fanbases, a majority of which buy multiple copies (at least one digital and one physical) in the first week. It's practically impossible not to have a drop when the digital market has frontloaded everything.

I think most of the sales for Tori Kelly's album during the first week were fake.