Beyoncé took a big risk by dropping her self-titled album on iTunes late last week without any pre-release promotion, and it's now abundantly clear that the bold move paid off.

In a press release today, Apple said the album, which crashed iTunes server due to tens of thousands of fans rushing to download the album, is the fastest selling ever on the iTunes Store, moving 828,773 units worldwide in its first three days of availability.

The album sold 617,213 copies in the U.S., and went to number one on the iTunes chart in 104 countries.

The self-titled, BEYONCÉ, is the fifth solo studio album from Beyoncé, which was made available exclusively worldwide on the iTunes Store on December 13 by Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records. The self-titled set is the artist’s first visual album. BEYONCÉ is infused with 14 new songs and 17 visually stunning, provocative videos shot around the world from Houston to New York City to Paris, and Sydney to Rio de Janeiro, all before the album’s release. The album represents Beyoncé’s biggest sales week ever.

The iTunes Store is the world’s most popular music store with a catalog of over 26 million songs and is available in 119 countries. The iTunes Store is the best way for iPhone®, iPad®, iPod®, Mac® and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music online. All music on the iTunes Store comes in iTunes Plus®, Apple’s DRM-free format with high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.

The album is currently featured in every slot on the promotion carousel at the top of the iTunes Store.

I wonder if any Nigerian artist could take a something risk. I don't think the music market in Nigeria would allow for such. The only person that could achieve something close is Wizkid (I think). He's about the artist with the most social media presence (about 920K twitter followers). With his sophomore album being highly anticipated, he might go the route of releasing the album on Spinlet but he'd still have to do some pre-release promotion.

What do you think?

Source - http://www.infonubia.com/2013/12/beyonces-new-album-shatters-records.html