Music
Jay-Z announces new album, 'Magna Carta Holy Grail'
by Tyler Munro
June 17, 2013
Not one to let Kimye’s Baby Yeezus get all the weekend glory, Jay-Z teamed up with Samsung for a lengthy 3-minute ad during last night’s NBA Finals game to announce that he’s got a new album coming out on July 4th. It’s called Magna Carta Holy Grail and if the spot is any indication, it features work with Timbaland, Swizz Beats and Pharrell with Rick Rubin hanging out to grab a producer credit. But where it gets crazy is word that the album’s going to be released early exclusively through an app on Samsung’s popular Galaxy phones.
To grab it, users will have to download the app when it goes live on June 24th. If you’re one of the first million, you’ll then be granted early access to Magna Carta Holy Grail on the 4th.
Apparently the deal includes Samsung pre-purchasing one million copies of the album, effectively certifying it platinum even if we’re not sure yet how the official charts are going to take the promotion. At any cost, this is supposedly a big one. When the New York Post reported on a deal between HOVA and Samsung earlier this month they said it was worth as much as $20 million. Add to that reports out of the Wall Street Journal that gifting the first one million copies of the album is costing them $5 a pop and you’ve got a huge investment. But with the album premiering exclusively through Google Play before it’s officially out worldwide, we’d wager Samsung’s probably going to come out alright with this one.
As for the album… who knows what you’ll get. Whatever the case, expect it to be big. This strategy is more than a little similar to what Madonna did to push MDNA to the top the charts. She gave it away with concert tickets, because as bad as her new music is it won’t stop fans from loving the classics, and in the end she ended up “selling” more than 350,000 copies in the first week. The problem? Once the promotion ended, sales dropped by 88%, giving Madge the dubious honour of having the worst week-to-week decline ever. Jay-Z’s plan is a little smarter, since he’s already gotten paid, but it’ll be interesting to see if other artists pick up on the strategy.
