Lady Gaga‘s Born This Way is projected to sell 1.15 million units in its first week, according to Billboard. The chart magazine notes that this is the biggest first-week since *NSYNC‘s Celebrity sold 1.88 million in its first week a decade ago.
Some pop chart wonks are up in arms about this, because of the effect of Amazon’s’ drastic loss-leading tactics. Approximately a third of all sales of the album were Amazon digital downloads, which cost customers a mere 99? for the entire album, with Amazon eating the remaining $7.40 of the wholesale digital price, costing them over $3MM. Amazon chalked up this substantial hit to their bottom line as a promotional expense for their own digital store —which drastically trails iTunes— and their new cloud drive.
