Rihanna’s ‘Anti’ goes Platinum in 48 hours

Rihanna’s Anti needed just 48 hours to reach Platinum status, the Recording Industry of America Association announced today.

The album was accidentally posted on Jay Z’s TIDAL streaming service on Jan. 27, and then officially released for purchase a day later. It was not supposed to be released until today. When it was released on iTunes, Anti included three extra tracks, which are also now available on TIDAL.

Thanks to the early release of the album, it passed 1 million copies, which gives it Platinum status. The RIAA tweeted the news first. Rihanna later celebrated the news:

Does this mean that Rihanna’s Anti will definitely debut at No. 1 on the Billboard charts? Actually, no. As Forbes points out, Billboard and Nilsen Music will not count the million copies that Samsung paid for that allowed many fans to stream it for free. Samsung is teaming up with Rihanna for her tour and since Billboard and Nilsen can’t determine if Samsung actually paid $3.49 or more, they will not count it for charting.

(A similar thing happened to Lady Gaga, when Born This Way was first made available on Amazon for .99 cents. Billboard and Nielsen didn’t count those copies either.)

Still the fact that Anti got such great numbers almost exclusively from TIDAL is good news for the struggling streaming site, which is trying to keep up with Spotify and Apple Music.

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