Rihanna’s new album Anti, dropped January 28th and the sales records show some very strange tendencies. It came out a week early on Tidal, a music streaming website. This pre-release spurred almost 1.5 million downloads and streams which is a very good number for an album drop, but they were for free. This is where the numbers get strange.

According to the New York Times, the album was released and only sold 490 copies the first week. But don’t think Rihanna lost all popularity and fame, there are some reasons for this. First was the album early release that week on a free music streaming website definitely caused a drop in buying numbers. However, Rihanna did make money for these because it was paid for by Samsung. Probably the biggest reason that the album only sold 490 copies in the first week is because it was released late in the selling period late at night.

The controversy caused by this is obviously blown out of proportion because total sales and downloads was above one million, making it a platinum album by the RIAA, the organization who give out these rankings. This album is coming just before the plethora of February albums by Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, and Young Thug.