Insert extremely surprised emoji face. Rihanna's new album, ANTI, was able to get TIDAL one million new subscribers in the span of fifteen hours, as well as 13 million streams for itself, but despite already being certified platinum by the RIAA, it has not landed a #1 debut on Billboard.
According to Billboard and Neilsen, ANTI culminated with 4.7 million streams for all of its songs, in the week ending January 28th, led predominantly by (and largely thanks in part to) the stream of her single "Work." As for downloads, the album only became available on digital retailers January 29th, and a physical CD release won't follow until February 5th-- nonetheless, in conjunction with Samsung, users were able to get a free download of the album. Those 1.47 million free downloads do not count towards Neilsen Soundscan sales figures, though (and thus affect Rihanna's rather low chart position). In terms of actual sales for the album, the number is reportedly just 460 copies (??!).
Despite starting out at #27, industry insiders expect RiRi to make a big leap in the coming week, possibly up to #1, after she's had a full week to ruminate on the web.
