Not only did Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" debut at #1 and sell 1.1 million units last week, the album also set a one-week SoundScan record for most digital sales. In fact, in just one week "Born This Way" became the eighth best-selling U.S. digital album of all time.
"Born This Way" was helped by an estimated 440,000 units sold in Amazon's two-day, 99-cent promotion for which her label, Interscope, was paid full price. Without sales from Amazon's promotion, "Born This Way" would not have surpassed the one million-unit mark but still would have achieved the best single week of digital sales in 2011. Amazon sold an estimated 440,000 digital albums of "Born This Way," meaning the title sold about 222,000 digital units elsewhere. Adele's "21" sold 217,000 digital units in its debut week.
In its debut week, the album sold 662,000 units - 60% of first-week sales - in the digital format. Both figures were higher than her previous albums. "The Fame" debuted October 28, 2008 with a modest 14,000 units and a 59% digital share. "The Fame Monster" debuted with 66,000 units and a 38% digital share. Since their releases, "The Fame" and "The Fame Monster" have 23% and 19% digital shares, respectively.
That first-week tally means "Born This Way" nearly caught the year-to-date digital sales of Adele's "21" in just one week (albeit a long week, since "Born This Way" was released on a Monday instead of the usual Tuesday new-release day). In 14 weeks, "21" has sold 842,000 digital albums and has been the dominant digital album of the year.
On top of that, in just one week, "Born This Way" becomes the eighth best-selling digital album in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. It is 11,000 units behind Kings of Leon's "Only By the Night" and 67,000 units behind Taylor Swift's "Fearless," both released in late 2008. The top three digital albums of all time are Eminem's "Recovery" (975,000), Lady Gaga's "The Fame" (961,000) and Adele's "21" (842,000).
Other top first-week digital album sales of 2011: Lupe Fiasco's "Lasers" has sold 114,000 units; Britney Spears' "Femme Fatale" 113,000; Foo Fighters' "Wasting Light" 103,000; Wiz Khalifa's "Rolling Papers" 73,000; the "Songs for Japan" collection sold 68,000; Beastie Boys' "Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2" 64,000; and Chris Brown's "F.A.M.E." sold 64,000 units.
Author: Glenn Peoples (@billboardglenn), Nashville
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