Jay-Z 'Magna Carta Holy Grail' New Album 2013: Samsung Purchases will NOT Count Toward Billboard Platinum Status [VIDEO]

On Monday, Jay-Z took to Twitter to say "If 1 Million records gets SOLD and billboard doesn't report it, did it happen?" Today (June 21), the industry sales tracker responded to the rapper, and he's not going to like what they have to say.

In a letter from the editor posted on Billboard.biz, Bill Werde, editorial director of the publication, stated that Samsung's purchase of 1 million copies of Magna Carta Holy Grail will not count toward album sales and won't launch the record to platinum status immediately upon its release.

The issue is that even though Samsung bought each copy of the album for $5, the consumers will ultimately be getting the record for free after downloading an exclusive Jay-Z Samsung mobile app.

Had Jay-Z and Samsung charged $3.49 - our minimum pricing threshold for a new release to count on our charts - for either the app or the album, the U.S. sales would have registered," said Werde. "And ultimately that's the rub: The ever-visionary Jay-Z pulled the nifty coup of getting paid as if he had a platinum album before one fan bought a single copy... But in the context of this promotion, nothing is actually for sale."

This isn't the first time that an artist has tried to boost album sales by working with major corporations or retailers. Werde noted that in 2008 Best Buy bought 600,000 copies of Guns N Roses' Chinese Democracy. Those sales did not count until fans purchased them.

The United States' Billboard was not the first chart tracker to turn down Samsung's purchases of Magna Carta Holy Grail. Yesterday, U.K.'s Official Charts Company stated that the free downloads won't count for their numbers either.