U2’s controversial free album on Apple’s iTunes had a less than stellar performance once released for commercial sale, coming in at number 9 in its first week on the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday.
Country group Florida Georgia Line far outperformed the Irish rockers by selling 197,000 copies of “Anything Goes” in its first week for the top spot on the chart, compared with U2’s 28,000 units sold, according to sales figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan.
“Songs of Innocence,” the 13th studio album from U2, became the largest album release in history after being made available for free in September on Apple Inc’s iTunes online store to half a billion iTunes users.
Billboard does not count sales of albums priced under $3.49 for its weekly album chart listings.
