Beyonce's Pregnancy Helps Boost Album Sales

If music marketing 101 relies on concert tours and promotions departments to boost record sales, Beyonce's definitely giving us a crash course in marketing 201 -- pregnancy. Her aptly named fourth album, 4, made a strong debut when it was released back in June, but fell off significantly in the month to follow, according to Idolator.

Sunday's epic VMA pregnancy announcement, however, has catapulted the album back onto iTunes top ten list, with the single she performed just before unveiling "the love growing inside" her, “Love On Top,” taking the number five spot.

The album had moved out of the top ten last week for the first time in its nine-week run, but is expected to sell anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 copies (a 40 percent increase from last week's 21,000) by Sept. 4, according to Billboard.

The record's first two singles, "Run the World (Girls)" and "The Best Thing I Never Had," have performed modestly on the charts, Rolling Stone reports, failing to catch on like previous smashes "Crazy in Love," "Irreplaceable" and "Single Ladies."

The announcement also broke Twitter records with the site registering some 8,000 tweets per second during Beyonce's VMA performance.

New York magazine summed it up best: "The ever-savvy Beyoncé and Jay-Z made the most of the news, keeping rumors remarkably quiet, then dropping the baby bomb center stage at the VMAs, with a tummy rub and some background screaming from Kanye. How could we resist such fanfare? The answer is: we cannot."