$3.8 million.
According to a report published by Bill Werde‘s Billboard today, the above is the amount Beyonce would have earned had illegal downloaders of her self-titled new album paid for the chart-topping release.
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Since its release on December 13th, the project has been downloaded illegally 240,000 times, seeing her lose out on $3.8 million with the project retailing at $15.99, according to Musicmetric.
Indeed, with 991,000 units sold in its first ten days of release, the projects success on the charts stand undisturbed by the piracy, but no doubt shines a fresh light on the problem that is illegal downloading.
For, between December 18th and today, the star’s entire discography was shared 2 million times over file sharing sites, but does not indicate how many music lovers would have purchased her material if it hadn’t been made available for free by the aforementioned ‘pirates.’
Why?
Well, while Musicmetric‘s data confirms the intense interest there is in the star’s music online, it is impossible to measure how many people who opted to pull the album illegally would have picked it up legally even if handed the $15.99 to purchase it.