Madonna, Timbaland Go Mobile
Artists Release New Albums to Verizon and Vodafone Cell Phone Users
Mar 20, 2008
Last time Madonna released a new album she may have “Hung Up” on you, but with Hard Candy on the horizon, she’s calling you back. UK publication The Times reports that in the week preceding the release of her new album Madonna will allow Vodafone cell phone customers in Europe to download one track a day for about 99p ($1.99) each.
Each of the 7 tracks will be available for 24 hours before being deleted and replaced with another.
Vodaphone has operations across Europe. Customers in the UK, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Belgium will be able to participate in the promotional scheme.
Mobile Phone Albums the New MP3
Having worked closely with super producer Timbaland last year on Hard Candy, Madonna may have taken notes from his promotion booklet.
Timbaland became the first artist in history to release an album exclusively to subscribers of Verizon's V Cast, the company’s mobile entertainment service, since inking a deal with the company in February.
"Just producing a mobile album has never been done. I'm the first to ever do it," Timbaland said about the project. Over the course of the year, he will produce a new track a month featuring different artists subscribers can download as he tours the country in support of his other release Shock Value.
Each track will cost $1.99 US and include an MP3 version as well as a ringtone. At the end of the year Verizon plans to release the songs as a compilation, though details are not yet available as to how or when this distribution will take place.
Ringtones Resound Big Business
In a time when tension remains high between traditional retailers and new media outlets including download services, the cell phone industry means big business. Ringtones have become the new single. Many artists today make just as much money or more on the sale of ringtones as they do physical CDs.
When “Hung Up” debuted as a ringtone a month before the release of Confessions on a Dancefloor in 2005, it became the number 1 selling ringtone in nearly 30 countries.
No stranger to self promotion and risky business moves, Madonna’s cell phone venture comes on the heels of new internet-only releases by Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, who essentially bypassed record companies altogether in order to offer their latest albums online for next to nothing.
Strangely, Madonna, soon to turn 50, was long before embracing internet outlets for her material, only releasing her catalogue to iTunes in late 2006.
Madonna’s new single, “4 Minutes” featuring Justin Timberlake with production from the omnipresent Timbaland, hits iTunes and other digital download outlets March 26. Hard Candy becomes available one month later.
Sources
Reuters
Timesonline website
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