Just how popular is the new Rihanna album, “Anti”?

To judge by the proclamations of Tidal, the streaming music service in which Rihanna is a partner, it is an unqualified smash. The album, which came out late Wednesday after a drawn-out marketing campaign and a last-minute leak, was released with help from a sponsorship deal with Samsung in which one million copies were given away to fans.

Those downloads led the Recording Industry Association of America to immediately certify “Anti” as a platinum release. Tidal further said that it had sold 484,833 downloads of the album, in addition to those given away as part of the Samsung promotion, and that the album was streamed 5.6 million times on its service.

But despite those big numbers, “Anti” had a low start on the Billboard album chart this week, opening at No. 27 — Rihanna’s lowest opening chart position. Nielsen reported that the album sold fewer than 1,000 copies in the United States; a subscriber to its service who declined to be identified because the data is private, said that the number of albums sold was 460. The album also had 4.2 million streams and 126,000 sales of individual tracks, according to data from Nielsen, whose accounting week goes through the end of Thursday.

One explanation for the low sales number for “Anti” comes from Tidal itself. On Monday, a spokesman for the company, Dan Roberti, said that the album was put on sale late Thursday, after Samsung’s exclusive giveaway period ended, giving the album just a few hours to rack up sales for the week.