People aren’t interested in buying music. Even Lada Gaga and Miley Cyrus have struggled to sell huge numbers of their respective albums. 2013 is the year where it all became startlingly clear, that is until Beyoncé launched her shock self-titled album.

After selling 80,000 copies within three hours of its unexpected midnight release on Friday, the album has gone on to notch up a gigantic 828,773 sales worldwide, with 617,213 of those being sold in the U.S. alone. Not too shabby for a pensive album with no obvious singles, especially when you consider that Beyoncé’s last album 4 sold a paltry 310,000 in its first week.

These numbers have unsurprisingly broken records – Beyoncé is the fastest-selling album ever on iTunes, and also takes the record for first week sales in the U.S. It certainly seems as if Beyoncé’s unorthodox approach (no promotion, a ‘visual’ album) worked very much in its favour, but it also can’t hurt that the singer did a heroic amount of touring this year.

We reckon these kind of releases might well become more frequent in the months and years to come, and you have to admit, they certainly beat the excruciating PR engineered drip-drip campaigns that have plagued 2013.
[FACT]