Cloud gathers over Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga’s highly anticipated Born This Way was always going to be one of the year’s biggest sellers, but the superstar is hoping to break charts records in America by giving away her album for the bargain price of 99 cents.
Experts are now predicting a first week sales tally of between 750,000 and one million units after initial estimates of around 500,000 copies.
A large chunk of those sales are due to Mother Monster’s peerless work ethic, brilliant promotional campaign and non-stop string of hits (see Judas below), but a new deal between her label and online retailer Amazon puts a question mark over the legitimacy of what promises to be the year’s highest selling debut.
As part of Amazon’s new Cloud storage service – think of it as their version of Windows Media Player or iTunes – customers get a free 20GB storage upgrade and a copy of Born This Way for 99 cents when they sign up.
The deal was only valid for 24 hours but has been a huge success, threatening to break the digital download record of 288,000 set by Coldplay’s Vida La Vida.
That still means Lady Gaga’s sales total has been inflated by almost 300,000 copies – to put it in context, more than either Britney or Rihanna could manage in their entire first week with Femme Fatale and Loud respectively.
However, there is now some debate as to whether Soundscan (the American equivalent of ARIA) will actually include the 99 cent sales or not.
Is giving away 14 songs for a dollar taking things too far or is this just another master marketing move by Mother Monster?
Via The Prophet Blog.
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[…] the controversy surrounding Lady Gaga’s 99 cent deal with Amazon, fans and critics have been paying extra attention to the first week sales total of Born This Way […]
So if an artist who wanted a no.1 sold it online for 5c to all their fans and made a huge loss, they would still go no.1 according to Soundscan and Billboard? The only requirement is for it not be completely free? Crazy!
It isn’t right. Soundscan should not be allowed to include sales unless they are based purely on consumer-album purchases. Amazon sacrificing millions of dollars of loss for a promo which give you a new album for 99c, as long as you subscribe to their new music service should not be regarded as consumer purchases. Moreover its bad for the music industry, because this is not something which will happen often, and so, all it has done is allow Lady Gaga’s album join a prestigious list of 1mill+ 1st week sales undeservingly. I believe this will come back to bite Soundscan, Amazon and Lady Gaga in the behind.
[…] we reported earlier in the week, Amazon is offering customers 20GB of free storage and a copy of Mother Monster’s third album […]
I thought that albums under 4 dollars do NOT count to sales per prior Soundscan rules. Also,she had a promotion where Best Buy customers were FORCED to have TWO copies of her album included in their cell phone sales…it was listed as FREE,but Interscope had to purchase the songs to give away,which is againist the rules. Soundscan already said that those sales will NOT count toward her total. Best Buy sells 200,000 cellphones a week,again,artificial inflation. I would think Soundscan would suspend counting any sales from Best Buy or Amazon for Gaga until it is clear that the sales are within the rules. And I think she would sell just 300K if those fake sales are ommitted.
What this article does not take into consideration is the fact that while there may be some extra copies purchased because of its low price, the fact remains that a lot, if not most, of these copies would have been sold anyway at a higher price. Just because someone chooses to buy an album from the cheapest possible place does not mean they would not pay more for it if they had to. Its not as if these 300,00 sales were just magically given to her.
SMH @ this ‘woman’,
She will do anything to be successful. Just today she was on Letterman telling him that her worldwide sales are 24 million just for her first two albums combined (not including singles). That’s a blatant lie, but it shows how deluded she is. She’s all about the numbers and success. I can’t stand her and she makes me feel ashamed to be a lesbian.
I’d rather support true gay icons like Melissa Etheridge and K.D. Lang than this fake desperate broad.
Anyway, her album of mainstream radio trash isn’t even worth 99 cents. Sell it for 5 cents and then maybe I’ll buy it so I can use it as a frisbee for my pet poodle Chaz.