Just as promised by the savviest entrepreneur in hip hop, Jay-Z’s twelfth studio album has already rewritten the rules of the music industry – and it’s not even out for another two days.
The rapper, label boss, sports agent and all-round business mogul knows a good deal when he sees one, and last month he announced that his new record, the bombastically titled Magna Carta Holy Grail, will be given away free to one million Samsung Galaxy smartphone users who sign up via a dedicated app. If you don’t own a Samsung, or if one million fans get there before you, too bad – you’ll have to wait three long days until the mobile phone maker’s exclusive deal expires, after which Island Def Jam will distribute the record in physical and digital formats as normal.
So far, so normal, in a world where Beyonce previews her new singles in TV commercials for Pepsi and H&M. But this release is different, as Jay-Z knew when he wrote “#newrules” in a tweet last month, asking: “If 1 Million records gets SOLD and billboard doesnt report it, did it happen?”
Unfortunately for Jay, Billboard, the US trade magazine and chart compiler, thinks not. Nothing is actually for sale, argues the magazine’s editor, Bill Werde. “Samsung users will download a Jay-branded app for free and get the album for free a few days later after engaging with some Jay-Z content,” he pointed out last week. “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.”
If 1 Million records gets SOLD and billboard doesnt report it, did it happen? Ha. #newrules #magnacartaholygrail Platinum!!! VII IV XIII
— Mr. Carter (@S_C_) June 17, 2013
But the quest for the Holy Grail took a new twist today when the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade organisation that awards gold and platinum discs, made the surprise decision to change its own rules on certification in light of Jay’s “novel and creative marketing move”. Until now, digital and physical album sales have been counted up 30 days after release to allow for returns, but following the release of Magna Carta Holy Grail, digital albums will be eligible for gold or platinum status from the day of release.
All this means that, come Independence Day, Jay-Z will be in the bizarre position of receiving platinum certification for an album that isn’t even in the charts – you can definitely call that #newrules. But there’s something else strange going on here. As Billboard’s editor pointed out, Magna Carta Holy Grail costs nothing, so it can’t be counted as a sale. If anything, it’s a free gift for Samsung owners, an unexpected perk for those with the lucky handset. The RIAA’s criteria include figures on pricing, but not at point of sale, only on the manufacturer’s side, which in this case is taken care of by Samsung. Jay-Z has worked out how to get paid in full, in advance – the electronics company has stumped up $5 apiece for one million albums, and given him a platinum album before any of his fans have even heard it.
Magna Carta Holy Grail will no doubt go platinum anyway after the Samsung exclusive expires and it becomes available to all – at which point it’ll also be sitting pretty on top of the Billboard 200 chart. But the upheaval provoked by the release raises serious questions for musicians and the rest of the industry. Should artists be in the position to buy themselves a platinum certificate? Or rather, to entice a megabucks global brand to buy it for them? Thousands of Samsung smartphone users with only a passing interest in Jay-Z’s music will happily take the opportunity to download an album free of charge – an album they might never have considered buying otherwise.
Jay-Z isn’t the first artist to explore branding partnerships to release music, of course – in 2007, Prince cut a deal with the Mail on Sunday to give away his 2007 album Planet Earth as a free CD, a move that made it ineligible for the UK charts – but he is the first to do it digitally, showing how much music distribution has changed in the past five years.
In the future, brand tie-ins could allow more records to be released outside of the usual distribution systems, cutting out labels and record shops – but artists would have to be a brand of their own to make it work. Samsung are using Jay-Z’s brand (his cool factor, essentially) to carve out a niche in the music market for themselves, but would they be so interested in working with less famous or less mainstream artists? As record sales stagnate, the idea of partnering with a company like Samsung may eventually seem like the best deal going for an artist – that upfront money could be the most they ever see from their record sales.
