Back in May, Lady Gaga scored 2011's best one-week sales tally when she moved more than 1.1 million copies of Born This Way. But after a rule change just made by Billboard, over one-third of those sales would no longer count toward the album's Nielsen SoundScan number. Records sold for less than $3.49 during their first four weeks of release will no longer be eligible for inclusion on the Billboard chart, a change made in light of Born This Way selling an estimated 440,000 units via a special 99-cent promotion on Amazon. Billboard initially decided to count those sales toward the final one-week 1.1 million figure, but the publication has now decided that similar promotions won't be allowed to goose up sales stats in the future. No explanation was given for the change, and it appears that Born This Way's numbers won't be retroactively altered. But if you discount the album's Amazon sales, the biggest one-week tally now belongs to Lil Wayne for Tha Carter IV, which sold 964,000 without any help from a 99-cent sale. [via Spin]
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