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 ||||| It's Official: Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' Sells 1.11 Million 
 
 By Keith Caulfield, Los Angeles 
 
 Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" album debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 1,108,000 copies sold in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It's only the 17th album to sell a million in a week since SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991, and the highest sales week since 2005. 
 
 
 
 "Born This Way" also marks Gaga's first No. 1 album -- "The Fame" debut peaked at No. 2, while "The Fame Monster" EP reached No. 5 and dance effort "The Remix" hit No. 6. 
 
 
 
 "Born This Way" reaps the largest sales week of any album since 50 Cent's "The Massacre" did 1,141,000 in its first week, in March of 2005. The last time we had a million-plus frame was when Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" premiered at No. 1 with 1,047,000 in November of 2010. The SoundScan-era record week is held by NSYNC's "No Strings Attached," when it debuted at No. 1 with 2,416,000 in 2000. 
 
 
 
 Additionally, Gaga is only the fifth woman to notch a million-plus week. The record frame for a woman is held by the bow of Britney Spears' "Oops! I Did It Again," which started with 1,319,000 upon its release in May of 2000. "The Bodyguard" soundtrack, driven mostly by Whitney Houston songs, was the first SoundScan-era album to shift a million, and it did so over the busy Christmas shopping week of 1992 (1,061,000). Later, Norah Jonas' "Feels Like Home" debuted with 1,022,000 in 2004, and then the aforementioned Swift sizzled just last year. 
 
 
 
 While there wasn't any doubt as to whether Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" album would debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 -- that's been an assumption for months -- its first-week number was always in question. A month ago, executives at Gaga's record company, Universal Music Group, were expecting a first week total of around 400,000. 
 
 
 
 That number escalated to 650,000-700,000 by its release on Monday, May 23 -- the same day AmazonMP3 announced its controversial decision to sell the album for 99-cents for one day only. By last Wednesday (May 25), sources indicated that a million-unit week seemed quite plausible. Once Amazon opted to again sell the set for 99-cents on Thursday, May 26, "Born This Way's" million-unit week was all but guaranteed. It's estimated that Amazon sold upwards of 440,000 downloads of its 99-cent "Born This Way" album. 
 
 
 
 Gaga's total downloads haul from all digital retailers was 662,000 -- the biggest week for a digital album in SoundScan history. It represents 60% of the set's overall first week. 
 
 
 
 A full recap of the week's top 10 selling albums and digital songs will follow on Wednesday morning (June 1).
– Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way has zoomed to mega-hit status with sales of 1.11 million copies in its first week, making it the hottest-selling debut for an album since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005, according to Billboard. Only 17 albums in the last 20 years have hit a million in their first week of sales, although Gaga had a huge boost from an Amazon promotion, notes the Wall Street Journal. Amazon, in a bid to draw attention to its new Cloud Drive online storage service, offered downloads of the album for just 99 cents twice last week. The money-losing promotion helped sell an estimated 440,000 copies of Born This Way, crashing Amazon's servers in the process. The total number of downloads from all digital retailers was a record-breaking 662,000.