Say what you like about Lily Allen (I'm talking to you, Perez) but the singer/songwriter knows how to work it in a financial crunch. To promote her sophomore album, the already critically acclaimed "It's Not Me, It's You," the singer has teamed up with Amazon to offer the album for the low, low price of $3.99- at least for the first week of sales.
The promotion, which was supposed to end on February 16th, offers an MP3 of the hit album that downloads directly to your iTunes (once you've installed the Amazon MP3 downloader- both Mac and PC compatible). Although the deal was supposed to end yesterday, a quick glance on Amazon showed the album still being sold at the bargain price, so do yourself a favor and buy it while the going's good. I know, it's $3.99 more than a pirated version- but come on. Guaranteed perfect quality and no chances of being rickrolled.
Personally, I think it's a great idea. It's pretty hard to shell out $10 for an album on iTunes and even harder to drop $20 on a hard copy at Virgin, leading even the most morally upright of us to BitTorrent and Limewire for our musical needs and wants. But at just under 4 bucks, Allen's making it a lot easier for college students to say yes to legal music- even if it's just for a week at a time.
That's not the only way Lily's been promoting her album- she also had a free show at the Bowery Ballroom on February 10th. If you missed it, she's also playing for free in Tokyo and London later this month... let me know how it was.
I COULDN'T FIND IT!! i think they took the offer off the table the DAY i found out about it.
ReplyDeleteNot really a Lily Allen fan, but I do like the business model. It's about time these musicians (and more likely their agents) started pushing the record companies around a bit. Metallica can complain all they want about P2P downloading, but when it comes down to it, if they weren't charging $20 a pop for a crapshoot of an album (how often are the whole albums actually better than just the good singles?) on an outdated storage medium (the CD is so 80s), no wonder people steal their music.
ReplyDeleteIf more bands realized that they get their 10% no matter how much the record gurus make, then they can start to force the issue. Every album should be distributed for the more expensive price of $10 on a CD, and for dirt cheap online ($3-4 sounds about right). With no cost to press CDs, store them and ship them, there is no reason not to drop the prices of the albums and watch the sales roll in.
More people will actually buy which means more money for everyone (and the good will of being an early artist who "cares about their fans listening to the music" should surely help a few fledgling careers).
I mean, since the cost of recordng the album is negligable in the grand scheme of things, if online cuts out the physical transaction costs shouldn't all music albums be this price by now? And wouldn't I buy more of them instead of downloading the one or two tracks I like?