After all that talk about underperforming singles and creative bankruptcy and overexposure, Lady Gaga did exactly what she was supposed to do with Born This Way, her first album since officially branding herself a superstar: sell a ridiculous number of units. The exact number, 1.1 million in the first week , is startling — but it comes with a caveat. That final tally was greatly boosted by the fact that Amazon, looking to drive people toward their new Cloud Drive music locker service, dropped the price on Born This Way’s digital release to an all-new loss-leader low of 99 cents. Over the two days of the offer, the album was downloaded 440,000 times, roughly two thirds of its overall digital sales count. So how much did Amazon cough up in the process? 
 
 According to the New York Times, Amazon paid Gaga’s distributor, Universal, full price (between $8 or $9 per album), meaning they lost more than $3 million. That is certainly a ton of money to have kicked into your campaign by an entity that has no actual interest in how well your album sells, and it provides much fodder for anyone wishing to quibble with the validity of the 1.1 million number. But Lady Gaga should still get a lot of the credit: Amazon would have wanted to pull this kind of sales gimmick with someone, and, thanks to the all-permeating pop-culture presence that Gaga has cultivated, she was the top option. Meanwhile, Amazon chalks all those millions up to marketing costs and moves on. Win-win! Still, Taylor Swift — who only mustered a paltry 1.04 million sales for Speak Now’s first week — is probably pretty salted. ||||| Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" sold 1.11 million copies its first week in North America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, giving the pop singer the largest sales week since 2005. 
 
 View Full Image Everett Collection Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' sold 1.11 million copies in its first week. 
 
 Sales of the album, launched on May 23, were helped by Amazon.com Inc., which offered a digital-download version of "Born This Way" for just 99 cents on Monday and Thursday last week. The low price drew attention, created technical problems and helped sell an estimated 440,000 downloads, according to an estimate posted on the website of trade magazine Billboard. That appeared to be about double the number of albums sold by Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, which normally commands a dominant share of paid digital downloads. 
 
 The first day of Amazon's promotion, which was designed to draw attention to its new Cloud Drive online storage service, the retailer was forced to apologize for delays in delivering the album. Three days later it repeated the offer, telling customers: "This time we're ready." 
 
 Apple sells the same album for $11.99. Both services offered an expanded edition of the album for higher prices. 
 
 Amazon paid the album's full wholesale cost, about $9, to the singer's record company, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, and absorbed the cost. 
 
 The last album to sell more copies in a week was rapper 50 Cent's "The Massacre," which notched 1.14 million copies its first week out, in 2005. 
 
 Albums that sold a million copies in a week have never been common. Since SoundScan started in 1991, the service has reported only 17 albums that achieved that sales record. 
 
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 But as music sales have declined under pressure from digital piracy and other forces, they have become even rarer. Last December, Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" sold just over 1 million copies its first week out. 
 
 Apple is expected to start iCloud, its competitor to Cloud Drive, next Monday. The service is expected to include more features than Cloud Drive, thanks to a set of licensing deals it recently reached with Universal and other major music companies. 
 
 Write to Ethan Smith at ethan.smith@wsj.com
– Lady Gaga sold a whopping 1.1 million copies of Born This Way in its first week, but 440,000 of those copies went for just 99 cents on Amazon.com. Amazon, however, did pay Gaga's distributor the full price of $8 to $9 per album—which means, the New York Times calculates, the online retailer lost more than $3 million. Of course, New York magazine points out, a big point of the gimmick was to drum up new users for its Cloud Drive service, so the company can just consider those millions "marketing costs." As for Gaga, the move does provide "much fodder for anyone wishing to quibble with the validity of the 1.1 million number," writes Amos Barshad. Click to see which artist Barshad thinks is "probably pretty salted" right now.