U2 album stumbles in Billboard chart after free iTunes debut

U2’s controversial free album on Apple’s iTunes had a less than stellar performance once released for commercial sale, coming in at number nine in its first week on the Billboard 200 album chart.

Country group Florida Georgia Line far outperformed U2 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.

U2’s lead singer Bono apologised last week to users who objected to receiving an automatic download of the band’s latest album, after thousands complained they did not want the album and that it took up precious storage space on Apple devices.

For the week ended October 19th, total album sales clocked in at 4.4 million units, down 6 percent from the comparative week in 2013, while year-to-date album sales tallied at 199.93 million, down 14 per cent from the same point last year, Billboard said.