Beyonce's Lemonade just hit iTunes today after being a TIDAL exclusive when it first dropped. However, it's not available to stream on Apple Music or Spotify. The window for how long TIDAL has streaming rights is unknown. Unlike The Life Of Pablo, Bey will be able to get that #1 album on Billboard's charts.
The first week projections for Lemonade are between 500-600K, according to HDD. So she could go Gold her first week. Her last album, 2013's surprise project Beyonce, brought in 617,213 sales in only three days.
As for external comps ... as much as we'd like to compare Lemonade to Rihanna's Anti, the distribution of RiRi's eighth album included 1.4 million free downloads from Samsung, which made it impossible to get a real read on its early "sales."
But we do know Lemonade won't catapult Beyonce into the same category as chart queens Adele (3.48 million first week for 25) and Taylor Swift (1.28 million for 1989.)
It will be interesting to compare her sales to Drake -- who's Views From The 6 drops on Friday.
Granted, Apple Music's one week exclusivity on Views may wreck havoc with Drizzy's first week numbers.
But, at the end of the day, who do you think sells more, Drake or Beyonce?
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