Madonna just pre-released a stream of her latest album on Myspace (thanks, Mashable!). It looks like she’s getting Web 2.0 savvy, right?
Wrong.
It fascinates me that the Material Girl, “she who has withstood the test of time,” can be so backwards in how she releases her music. When she did something like this for her last album, she added some commentary that made any attempts to pirate the tracks “worthless.” This time around, she’s just streaming a digital replica of the album, one that’s fairly easy for any techno-savvy listener to download in spite of Myspace’s attempts at protection.
She was almost onto something in her last release, but must have forgotten to put her glasses on when the opportunity came this time around.
She started by releasing an inferior product online, and a superior product offline. So far so good, in spite of the attempt to ruin the experience for online listeners.
When her next opportunity knocked, she followed that up by releasing an online product that’s identical to the hard copy. Does anybody really think that that will drive sales?
Of course not.
What she — and other artists — needed to do was release an inferior copy online, that’s for sure. But this inferior product shouldn’t include tracks that deter listeners from listening to them, or, more importantly, sharing them with friends. Instead…
Artists should be giving away a sample of their wares — be it a few tracks or a full album — and adding value to the product people pay for.
I wrote about the “free samples” idea yesterday in my post about Ben & Jerry’s. For the music business, the next step is most pressing because of this simple fact:
Consumers will find music online for free, no matter how you try to stop them. Consumers will only become Customers if the paid product is better than the free one.
So Madge, I’m waiting: send me a copy of Hard Candy that beats anything I can find online, and I will personally buy 50 copies of your CD and send them to friends.
April 26, 2008 at 7:03 pm |
[...] People Do It This Way?” or “(Un)like A (Social Media) Virgin” Following yesterday’s post about Madonna’s new album, The Dieline shows me [...]
April 29, 2008 at 12:02 pm |
[...] GTA IV is out today and, yeah it’s a a pretty fab game, but it also does some pretty heavy stuff music wise. Let’s see – not only did rockstar load this kid up with tons of real world music (not a new trick) but you can buy the music you hear in-game with your in-game cellphone, get it through amazon, and land it on your ipod.This is some new thinking and it’s about time – the industry needs a kick in the ass. [...]