U2 Gives Away New Album NOW, Skip Charts, And Who Cares? No Money in CD Sales
U2 Gives Away New Album NOW, Skip Charts, And Who Cares?
No Money in CD Sales
by Roger Friedman - September 9, 2014 4:44 pm
U2 has released its new album to iTunes subscribers today
like right now, to all 500 million of them. Songs of Innocence is the title.
Sign up for iTunes– it’s free– and you can get the album free if you order it
by October 13th. The album will not qualify for chart positions or RIAA
certifications. And U2 is saying basically Who cares?
Album sales have vanished. The most U2 would sell in its
first week, if they were very very lucky, would between 300,000 and 500,000
copies. And that’s being extremely optimistic. It’s not worth the price of
printing them up. Just give it away, and make the money through publishing,
which the group owns, and concert tours. LiveNation will soon announce a world
wide tour that should net the group hundreds of millions of dollars.
It’s brilliant, and no different in concept than giving
CDs to ticket buyers, which has been tried with Madonna and Prince. LiveNation
has U2 under a 360 contract, they can simply build in the price of the album.
Universal Music can collect on vinyl, a small amount of physical CDs, and
streaming. My guess though is that “Songs of Innocence” will limited to
streaming on iTunes Radio and not available on Spotify and other services.
Check mate.
Hats off to Guy Oseary who continues the tradition of
taking U2 into brave new waters, started by Paul McGuinness.
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