Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled album dropped late on Thursday evening, and according to Billboard, it has already sold over 430,000 units. The album reportedly sold around 80,000 in the first three hours, and there’s still time before the full first-week sales figures are in.
The album, released without any promotion or announcement beforehand, had the Internet buzzing and will go down as one of 2013’s most interesting rollouts. Beyoncé features 14 songs, each with a video, and it’s for sale on iTunes for a price of $15.99. Individual songs will not be made available until December 20, so if fans want the album, they must buy all of it, including the videos. This has caused a few problems, but the numbers indicate that Beyoncé’s strategy has worked—first-week predictions are putting the album around 600,000 units, which would be Beyoncé’s best sales week ever.
