Rihanna didn't quite mimic the phenomenally-successful Beyonce surprise album, with her own surprise release of ANTI. A couple of factors to take into consideration in this were, 1) Billboard and Neilsen decided not to count the million free downloads Samsung gave away (although the RIAA did), and this reflected in her low debut numbers 2) the album leaked prematurely, albeit briefly.
As we reported on, TIDAL leaked both the tracklist and the album itself for a brief period of time-- brief, but still long enough for users to rip it and it make it available on the worldwide web. TIDAL later hosted the exclusive stream for the album. A rep for the music streaming platform spoke with Spin magazine about the leak, and blamed it on a "system error"-- "a system error caused by Universal Music Group. The error was not something TIDAL caused."
Are we about to have the first ever streaming/label beef go down? An executive at Universal, who chose to remain anonymous, has responded to TIDAL's jabs, claiming the leak was no fault of their own. Speaking to Billboard, the anonymous person said, "This whole thing is absurd, we would have taken responsibility if it were our error. Instead of having their flack flail around trying to revise their own media spin, maybe they should just focus on serving Rihanna -- that's what we're focused on."
Leak or no leak, what did you think of Rihanna's ANTI?