A week ago today fans were surprised to see Lady Gaga’s latest album Born This Way on Amazon for a very low 99 cents. So how did the online retailer pull this deal off?

Billboard.biz has learned that Amazon shelled out $3.2 million to offer the album at the special price. This was all to help raise awareness about Amazon Cloud Drive, their online music service:

The important aspect of this 99-cent promotion is the value of the increased traffic and awareness. It has new products to promote, Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. Google has soft-launched a competing cloud music storage service called Music Beta and Apple appears to be nearing a launch of its cloud music service. Considering all the media attention the promotion has received, it’s not difficult to imagine Amazon getting back an equal value of consumer awareness of those new products.

While the 99 cent promotion is over, Amazon is still offering the album for an affordable $6.99.