Jay-Z's new album, Magna Carta Holy Grail is set to drop on July 9th, but some specific set of people would get the album on their phones by July 4th...actually, a million people with some specific Samsung Galaxy Mobile phones will get it on their phones on July 4th. Jay made a power-move with Samsung Mobile, and sold 1 million copies of his album to them before it even got fully completed. It's actually a really cool business move, but dose it show actual consumer preference? Samsung bought the million copies to give away to people with some new models of their Galaxy Smartphone collections- Samsung Galaxy S3, S4, and Note 2.
Billboard has said they wont count the Million copies bought by Samsung as actual sales, but RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have said they have re-reviewed their rules to make it official that Jay's one million copy sales to Samsung counts and earns him a platinum plaque. Hmm! Talk about having friends in high places. Read the official statement from RIAA below-
"By now, many of us in the music business, as well as Jay-Z fans, know that Samsung has purchased one million "Magna Carta Holy Grail" digital albums to be given away to the phone maker's customers. It is a novel and creative marketing move and it has rightly stimulated a healthy conversation about the sale's meaning and implications for the modern music business. For us, the move prompted a re-examination of our historic Gold & Platinum (G&P) Program award rules. As we dug through the records of audits, re-reviewed rules and consulted with our auditing firm of more than thirty years, Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, we discovered one rule disparity that no longer makes sense. We think it's time for the RIAA - and Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman - to align our digital song and album certification requirements. That's why today we are officially updating this rule in our G&P Program requirements. Going forward, sales of albums in digital format will become eligible on the release date, while sales of albums in physical format will still become eligible for certification 30 days after the release date. Not only do we believe it's sensible and logical to align digital album rules with those we have maintained for digital singles since the program's inception, we also consider today's move in line with our larger efforts to modernize the G&P Program to reflect the new music marketplace. In May we announced the integration of on-demand streams to the program to more broadly recognize online demand for songs." (RIAA)
Nice! Jay just made $5 million out the gate with this album, and earned himself another platinum plaque before his album hit stores. That is definitely a power move. He sold the album $5 a piece to Samsung. All his albums have platinum plaques, and his last one, Blueprint 3, which was released in 2009, has sold over 1.9 million copies to date. If left alone to sell organically, the album would still have gone platinum.
Check out the tracklist of the 14 track album below-
'Picasso Baby'
'Heaven'
'Versus'
'Tom Ford'
'Beach Is Better'
'F**kWithMeYouKnowIGotIt' (Feat. Rick Ross)
'Oceans' (Feat. Frank Ocean)
'F.U.T.W.
'Part II (On The Run)' (Feat. Beyonce)
'BBC'
'La Familia'
'Jay-Z Blue'
'Nickles & Dimes'
'Holy Grail' (feat. Justin Timberlake)
'Open Letter'
