Beyonce was a one time stunt get over it.

Before this Beyonce ordeal gets out of hand,  this is the 1st (and probably the last) successful stunt release. There are only a handful of artists that are internationally known by a single name who have the ability/ego to even attempt this...so while people are talking about it as a major stunt, others will try this approach. The problem with that route is there is more to doing a digital only release than what meets the eye.

 I put up one of the first digital distribution outlets on the internet starting as ~Altavoz moving to Altavoz.com in May of 1995.

There's a shrinking number of people that have been on the Internetwork let alone attempting to be a digital distributor longer than I have had the privilege to.  

The one thing that most don't know is that itunes in the USA doesn't fully represent what the rest of the world can purchase.  To attempt to have your music distributed worldwide, you have to have a relationship with the various territories of iTunes. On top of that hurdle, each of the iTunes territories has a different criteria for releasing a song.  To do this, you either need to get to the distributor of that artists digital content (definitely under a contract) or bypass them. Again, only internationally recognized single named artists are heffed up enough to try this route, but the fools will follow.

There is one fickle thing about our business that drives people crazy, and that is we have a quirky reporting system. This system definitely ain't perfect, however, the success of this system is ultimately for the 99.1 percent of recording artists who are selling digital and physical copies of their releases. Despite what all of my older friends want to believe physical outsells digital 2 to 1. The success of this release just got a bit rougher for said internationally known artist as the number one retailer of music said...

"Talk to the Hand Queen B." AKA, we ain't carrying it.  

Now that she just snubbed the entire ecosystem of music stores and every partner channels (save the one that sells music to sell hardware) the final year end count is still out; so calling this a success based on her past sales, we'll all have to wait to see....

PS