UPDATE: Monday will see a big debate about Jay Z’s announced forthcoming album– and Samsung’s giveaway of 1 million copies to their customers. Samsung bought 1 million copies for $5 each and they’re going to give them away to their customers. Cheapo copies tied to promotions have caused a brouahaha in the record biz. When Lady Gaga sold hundreds of thousands of “Born this Way” CDs through Amazon for 99 cents, new rules were put in place. The minimum sale price has to be $3.49. Madonna sold a bunch of her last album by attaching it to ticket sales. It dropped 70% in its second week. Jay Z’s “Magna Carta Holy Grail” will register 1 million copies all at once through Samsung devices. But then what? And how will SoundScan react to such a deal when other albums that week will sell for twice that much? And how is it no one from DefJam has mentioned this album coming in between releases from Kanye West and Mariah Carey this summer?
EARLIER: Kanye West’s “Yeezus” is coming on Tuesday. But now we hear a couple of weeks more will bring Jay Z’s “Magna Carta Holy Grail.” As with “Yeezus,” the Jay Z album is produced or prepared by Rick Rubin. You’ll see him in the video below. Weird– at Sony, Rubin did nothing. Now he’s quarterbacking the hip hop releases at Island DefJam. And it looks like he leaves his house for the studio. In between Kanye and Jay Z, Def Jam releases Mariah Carey’s new album. What a summer!
By the way, Jay Z has a unique merchandising deal with Samsung. Score one for the Korean electronics giant. This is why the Galaxy and Note lines have gained so much against Apple. They know cool.
Samsung will give away 1 million copies of Magna Carta to fans who download their Jay Z app. Samsung paid $5 for the albums. Should SoundScan count those as sales? The lowest amount an album can sell for and be counted is $3.49 after the big Lady Gaga-amazon debacle.
