Despite massive amounts of promotion and well over one million dollars spent in a marketing push, it's official, Rihanna's copyright infringing "Rated R" CD has flopped, selling 500,000 copies in three months, which is very weak for a major label artist. To date, the album has no hit singles either. This mark her worst showing on the charts and in the court of public opinion, as people have turned off from her, due to her poor behavior.
However, employing the Mariah Carey/Tommy Mottola sales fakery move, of shipping out way more albums to stores than one knows one can sell, Rihanna's CD has been certified platinum (meaning 1,000,000 CDs shipped, with 500,000 of them sitting on store shelves not purchased).
That's rated F for fail. One should have to literally sell the amount specified before receiving the plaques (otherwise that's just plaque). How can an artist feel good sitting on fake numbers. It's fraud.
Rihanna’s ‘Rated R’ Certified Platinum
Despite only recently surpassing 500k in US sales, Rihanna’s ‘Rated R’ album has just been certified platinum by the RIAA. However, the LP has not sold 1 million copies at retail venues, rather it has shipped over 1 million units in the US and is expected to achieve that sales figure with retailers in the near future.
