Billboard announced Tuesday that "Born This Way" debuted at No. 1 on its Billboard 200 album chart, becoming just the 17th album to sell a million copies in its first week since SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991 and the top-selling digital debut. The dance pop provocateur is just the fifth female with a an album that sold more than a million copies in the SoundScan era.
Lady Gaga's first No. 1 album sold the most copies of any debut since March 2005 when 50 Cent's "The Massacre" sold 1.14 million. The last million-selling album was Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" in November. Amazon's attention-grabbing download price of 99 cents last Tuesday and Thursday helped drive "Born This Way" to an unprecedented 662,000 in digital sales, pushing the album to nearly three times initial estimates by Universal Music Group. Amazon sold more than 440,000 of those copies alone, but with mixed results.
