Quote:Whereas most music marketing insists on clearly delineated release schedules for the most marketable singles and sequential, single-directed marketing campaigns, Gaga deliberately ignored such schedules for Born This Way, instead pre-releasing a wide assortment of album tracks through various platforms over a short period and announcing their availability through tweets and Facebook status updates. “The Edge of Glory” was thus released on iTunes on May 9, “Fashion of His Love” streamed through FarmVille on May 18, and details of “Hair” (including cover art) were presented via YouTube on May 14. Gaga also employed the unusual practice of hyping relatively unknown (and, at that time, unreleased) album tracks around which no singles campaign was intended.
...Gaga also posted updates and tweets discussing all of the album’s songs, even those tracks—such as “Government Hooker” and “Black Jesus”—that were unlikely to receive radio play. As a result of these practices, the debut of Born This Way occurred as a kind of musical deluge in which the attention of consumers was multiply directed towards the entirety of the album and not any one or two specific tracks.
What is also noteworthy about such marketing is that Gaga did not seek to challenge consumers’ predilection for pop singles by employing a rhetoric that celebrated the album as a coherent unit. Indeed, Gaga’s marketing deliberately avoided talk of overarching themes, extended narratives, and unifying concepts. While the music industry has, in the last few years, been increasingly experimenting with concept or narrative-driven albums as a means of pushing album sales (see, for example, Beyonce’s I Am Sasha Fierce and Mariah Carey’s Memoirs of an Imperfect Diva), Gaga has stuck solidly with the single as the basic unit of meaning for pop music. But Born This Way also breaks from traditional approaches to pop singles by refiguring the album as an entire collection—indeed a celebration—of simultaneously released individual masterpieces. Echoing the multi-cultural and anti-hierarchical messages of Gaga’s songs, such marketing presents consumers with 14 singles, all deemed equally valuable and equally deserving of being singled out as stars. http://culturalproductionblog.com/?p=433
NOTE: BORN THIS WAY SALES TUMBLED SHARPLY THE WEEK AFTER ITs DEBUT.
The worst drop in modern history until Madonna's recently released album.
The industry is still trying to find its way.
