Lady Gaga album demand overwhelms Amazon servers

SAN FRANCISCO — Much like the caller in the Lady Gaga hit song “Telephone,” some visitors to Amazon’s site received a busy signal Monday when they tried to download the digital version of the artist’s latest album, “Born This Way,” which the online retailer was selling for 99 cents on its release date.

Spokeswoman Sally Fouts said Amazon experienced a high volume of traffic that caused delays for those downloading the album — echoing a posting on the album’s product page on Amazon.com. Customers who ordered the MP3 version of “Born This Way” on Monday will get it for 99 cents, she said.

An early evening attempt to buy the album on Amazon and use its new server-based storage system went seamlessly. The album appeared instantly on Amazon Cloud Drive and could be streamed online right away. The album downloaded in a few minutes to a computer. The user’s storage space also registered the promotional 20 gigabytes of cloud storage that came with the album.

Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, is known for her pop music and outre fashion sense.

Customer reviews gave the album an average three out of five stars.