Photo Courtesy beyonce.com/Frank Micelotta
After surprising fans and the music industry alike with her unannounced self-titled album last Thursday night, Beyoncé has achieved a career landmark and broken an iTunes record.
As we previously reported, the record sold 550,000 units in its first two days. That alone gave the singer her best debut and best sales week ever (although it was hardly even a full week), breaking her previous record of 541,000 copies of 2006's B'Day.
Ultimately, the album sold a whopping 617,000 copies in the very small window of three days, reaching the tally by the end of the weekly tracking period on Sunday evening. That will certainly give her more than enough to secure the No. 1 spot on Billboard over Garth Brooks' Blame It All On My Roots box set, which had seemed to be a lock for the top prior to Bey's bombshell release. The No. 1 title will officially be announced by Billboard on Wednesday.
The sum also breaks an iTunes one-week record previously set by Taylor Swift's Red when it sold 465,000 in October 2012.
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As if it were already a big enough deal, the mid-December album is actually the highest debut for a female artist, more than doubling Katy Perry's October debut of 286,000 with PRISM.
Currently an iTunes exclusive bundle, the album will be available for single-track purchases starting this Friday, when it also shifts to additional digital outlets and physical distributers.
New records from Childish Gambino and R. Kelly are also expected to fill out the Billboard 200 this week.