Amazon.com spent $3.2 million for 'Born This Way' 99 cent promotion

I thought that it was all a plan by Interscope to boost Lady Gaga's sales. Turns out Amazon.com was working independently. It used the promo for brand awareness for it's new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player (as well as use the traffic to get people buying other products).

Download: Born This Way [+Digital Booklet]

From Billboard:

Industry sources told Billboard.biz on Friday that Amazon sold some 440,000 downloads of the album - nearly all of which were the 99-cent version (a more expensive deluxe version is also available).

For every unit it sells at 99 cents, Amazon will lose about $7.40, according to Billboard's calculation. At $7.40 per unit and 430,000 units (10,000 shaved off total digital sales to account for some sales of the deluxe edition), the Gaga-related loss comes to $3.18 million.

The promotion was a boon for Gaga's first-week numbers, which are now projected to be approximately 1.15 million units, Billboard projects.

Amazon will lose money on each 99-cent sale because it is paying Interscope/Universal Music Group the standard rate for each unit sold. The similar title is selling for $11.99 at iTunes. The retailer typically keeps 30% of the sale price, meaning it owes the label and distributor the remaining 70% -- or $8.39.