Jamie McCarthy, Getty ImagesIt’s safe to say that 2013 was the Year of Beyonce. In the past 10 days, the R&B queen has sold 991,000 copies of her visual album. So it’s no surprise that her collection retains its No. 1 position on the Billboard 200 chart for a second consecutive week.
Buoyed by digital sales from iTunes and CD purchases at brick-and-mortar stores, the album moved 374,000 copies during the week ending Dec. 22. Queen Bey’s self-titled LP is now the 12th biggest-selling album of 2013. And with only one more tracking week left in the year, it’s likely that the ‘XO’ singer will finished among the top 10 sellers.
Interestingly, fans have also illegally downloaded Beyonce’s self-titled effort as well.
According to Musicmetric and Billboard, 240,000 copies have been bootlegged off the Internet since its Dec. 13 release.
Had those MP3s been purchased legally, Beyonce would have grossed $3.8 million in sales at $15.99 per album.
While these numbers could be tabulated as lost sales, Musicmetric’s Chief Executive Gregory Mead believes that the data could be useful in gauging her audience.
“The usefulness of BitTorrent data is that it allows record labels to have an incredibly detailed insight into where their artists are popular — right down to the town,” he told Billboard. “Although the file-sharing numbers may be high, it will be possible to translate many of these into buyers.”
Next: How ‘Beyonce’ Broke Music Industry Rules
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