After months of teasing that ANTI would be coming out very soon, Rihanna has finally released her eighth studio album, though it wasn’t much of a surprise. Rumors were saying that the album would come this week, especially after the success of her single “Work” debuting on Tidal.
That turned out to be true, but not as smoothly as we expected. The execution was botched after Tidal accidently uploaded their exclusive stream of the album on Wednesday (Jan. 20). Although it got taken down, the album was ripped and leaked online. Now, Tidal’s Director of Marketing Grace Kim is commenting on what happened.
Speaking with SPIN, she says ANTI moved “1.4 million in not 24 hours but 15 hours,” which was a huge achievement for them, despite the shaky start of Rihanna’s campaign. If people thought the initial leak was going to harm or help ANTI in the long run, she says no. “Look, we know what happened here, in the sense that unfortunately we still rely on systems, and there was a system error. But I don’t think it hurt it at all.”
Another Tidal representative clarified Kim's "system error" comment after the article was published. Kim was "referring to a system error caused by Universal Music Group. The error was not something Tidal caused," they said. The rep also stated Billboard and Nielsen are counting sales via Tidal towards their totals.
Still, Rihanna’s album is already certified platinum by the RIAA and has been streamed over 14 million times on Tidal. When physical copies of ANTI become available on Feb. 5 in both standard and deluxe edition, look for these numbers to increase exponentially.
