Jay Z New Album: Lobbying Group Caves, RIAA Will Count His 1Mil Giveaways

[Moonwalker.Fan]

Jay Z’s “Magna Carta” giveaway is almost here. Samsung will send out 1 million free copies on July 4th. They bought ‘em from Universal Music for five bucks each. Billboard and Soundscan so far are not counting the million copies for their charts. It’s a bulk sale, they maintain. And it’s free. Samsung also bought the albums for half the price they’d sell for on iTunes or amazon.


But the RIAA has caved in. The Record Industry Association of America gives platinum and gold albums based on “shipped units” not actual sales. Until yesterday they waited 30 days to see what returns came in before they gave the awards. But yesterday they announced that with digital sales they won’t wait anymore. And they will count the “Magna Carta” give away.


No surprise. The RIAA has five people from Universal Music on its board. They’re not exactly cutting edge, they go where the wind takes them, where it blows, so to speak. They’re the group that sues grandmothers for downloading, but let Bit Torrent, Pirate Bay and Lime Wire run wild for years until the record business was decimated.


It’s not to see they took a hard line on this one. Jay Z probably got his platinum album yesterday afternoon. Meantime, though I downloaded the app from Samsung, I’ve never actually been able to see the lyrics to the songs. A big gray box cuts them off. God knows what I’m missing…


http://www.riaa.com/news_room.php?content_selector=riaa-news-blog

 

[Moonwalker.Fan]

So... thats how the business game works..., all the agendas.... conspiracies... and creating new black heroes like Jay-Z or Diddy, labeling them the moguls..., supermega great.... and... MJ is still that one with huge debts and all the allegations...
I see the striking parallels with MJ in the 1990+....

 

[DuranDuran]

Business as usual

Not much different than what Prince did with Musicology, passing out the CD at his concerts and adding the cost of the album to the ticket. Also, this is not really anything unique for the record business. For decades, the labels sometimes would buy lots of their own records to spike the Billboard charts and pay radio stations to play or not play certain songs. Payola has always existed.

As far as the RIAA is concerned, it doesn't mean anything, they just pass out plaques to hang on the wall. It's not required that labels report to them, and even a label does, they've been known to "cook" the books, either underreporting (to avoid paying a lot of royalties) or overreporting.

 

[AtlasAir]

So... thats how the business game works..., all the agendas.... conspiracies... and creating new black heroes like Jay-Z or Diddy, labeling them the moguls..., supermega great.... and... MJ is still that one with huge debts and all the allegations...
I see the striking parallels with MJ in the 1990+....

wut ?