FINALLY, I comment that made sense of it all.

Album price fixing happens all the time (it’s a marketing stratgey), but usually not the first week of sales! Amazon would have to ask permission from the record company before dropping the price so low or to include it in the promotion, though it seems like a strategy to boost numbers for first week sales.

The bottomline is you can’t play the public/comsumer and shove an album down their throat and think they will always pay for it/go for it, but has a marketer u hope they do! Lady GaGa is talented she brings the catchy hits even if u ain’t feeling her visually u can’t deny the girl got HITS. SuBo is on her first album and riding the 1st album/TV hype and she can sing, but will she be able to do it twice in a row? I think Rhianna production has let her down the most, because if the album was actually good, peeps would actually over look all the image, perfomances & personal BS and buy the album. This just rings true to the saying “Your as big as your last record”, the industry is a VERY fickly place, ESPECIALLY in this download climate. Anyway if she gets dropped and loses Def Jam pure money (Which I’m sure she will) her breddren Jay will just snap her up and sign her to ‘Rocnation’, so she is GOOD anyway. P.s Subu is smashing GaGa and RiRi in the UK mid-weeks, its NOT even funny lol. Plus GaGa is also way ahead of RiRi by a large number. Things ain’t looking good for ‘Rated R’.

Plus Susan Boyle is expected to sell 500k+ in US which mean poor Rihanna will NOT DEBUT @ #1 after all that hype and controversy that she used to sell her album. I hope Lady Gaga outsells her also as her album is much better and creative…

2.Rihanna is NOT RnB by any means, she is strictly POP.

3.There is NO RnB music today,due to labels and artist’s greed to go after mainstreams’ money.
Berry Gordy’s Motown sound will forever be a legacy because he did not sell out RnB. He actually had great sounding artist so mainstream had to take note. Sorry but Rihanna is not a strong vocalist, nor a soulful one. She has great song writers and she’s mainstream’s size 2 to fit in a video. Sad but true for today’s music industry.

4.Def Jam is the most unscroupulous record label there is. They will do anything for a profit. They have bankrupted GREAT vocal talents such as Toni Braxton. So yes they are definitely using Rihanna as a pawn. And I agree that Jay-z and Def Jam brain washed Rihanna to demonize Chris at the price of super stardom.RIhanna was just as violent as CHris that night,and that’s a documented fact. She was just not as strong. No way to set a standard for young women to follow. Yet she got on TV and cried about Chris beating her after she attacked him and wouldn’t get out his car. They should have both been in counseling.

5.And I think Rihanna is medicated up from the guilt of selling her soul for fame.

6.If other artist have dropped their sales to 3.99, then I see this only as a marketing ploy. Her record label can book her as a top selling artist and get her to be a headliner for concert tours here in the states. She has never been able to headline a tour in the U.S., only abroad. And I understand that, she’s lacking in the charisma to captivate an audience with her vocals nor with her her dancing or personality. So people here can demand their money’s worth when they pay for a live concert. Whereas for people overseas, an American top selling artist is a novely.

7.I’m not a pop music fan, but I do realize that Rated R had strong writers and since she’s a stuido artist only, her voice comes across very well with all the automated enhancements.