Born In '88

Watch the Throne did not leak primarily because of the release and recording strategy. An album can leak due to a myriad of reasons but primarily the culprit is, the tracks pass through too many hands. Jay-Z insisted on recording the album in-person and reserved blocks of rooms at hotels exclusively for the album’s recording and production, i.e. “no mailing it in.” It caused delays but in addition to increased authenticity, it decreases leak risks. In the past, albums have been prone to leak during the mastering process by engineers. An easy fix to this is to use a trusted, veteran producer. In the case of Watch the Throne, Mike Dean was their guy. If an album has made it through recording and production leak free, high risk lies in the hands of the press and the CD manufacturing plant. 

The audiences at the Watch the Throne listening parties were carefully curated to ensure only trusted professionals were in attendance; But when blogger DDot Omen snuck into a recent listening session and attempted to leak snippets of each track on his blog, he wasn’t celebrated by the music community, but instead berated. The culture surrounding “Watch the Throne” made it clear that if one were to leak the album, they would be nobody’s hero and antagonized immediately.

To avoid a leak via the plant, Jay and West used a graduated release strategy. They chose to first exclusively release a digital deluxe version to iTunes on Aug. 7. The physical copies of the LP will exclusively be available at Best Buy on Aug. 12 for the first two weeks of the release. Fewer web and brick and motar retailers means fewer hands. But even more, targeting the source of a leak should one occur becomes easier. As the result of excellent strategy, Watch the Throne became one of the first albums in a long time to release leak-free.

Why didn’t Watch the Throne leak?

iamdonald:

Cypher at the Blue Note w/ Lupe, Kanye, and Mos Def

Fuckin Fire.

Three talented brothers.

Someone want to tell me why I wasn’t at that show? Reminds me why I do this in the first place. And they say live is dead.

A great artist doesn’t have fans, but brand evangelists. In “Direct Message From @JayElectronica: A Fan Engagement Case Study,” I explored digital brand engagement from the perspective of the fans. The above figure is a social media value chain model as executed by the artist. [Hi-Res]

Research in the economic impact of social media and direct-to-fan marketing is limited but artists like Lupe Fiasco, Nicki Minaj and Jay Electronica prove that strategic implementation of this marketing innovation will yield results. At a time where the record industry is in a severe decline, new and effective strategy is crucial to its turnaround.

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Jay Electronica’s fan engagement tactics are very unorthodox and completely worth it.

My first direct message was from Jay Electronica in 2008, days after Christmas. I had just joined twitter and made the premature decision to follow every rapper on the network and Jay followed me back. Soon after, he sent a direct message—no words, just this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGPhpvqtOc&feature=related

It was a YouTube link to a music video of “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins—I’ll leave delving into the implications of this message for my readers.

Later that year, I was unfollowed. But I wasn’t alone.  It was “The Great Unfollowing of 2009.” Jay Electronica unfollowed nearly all of his fans, truncating his follower list to less than 200.  A year later, high off the heels of announcing his signing to Roc Nation, he followed everyone back—sort of.

In the small hours of Nov. 15, Jay Electronica announced he would follow back anyone who hit him up. And they did. Jay Elect was the proud recipient of over 1500 mentions just an hour after the announcement. He has since followed about 1600 fans, a Dave Chappelle impersonator, Joe Budden, and me.

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On Jan. 11, Facebook crashed, or at least according to Kanye West. Around midnight, West tweeted a screen shot of an error page suggesting the famed social network had exceeded it’s bandwidth following the release of “H.A.M.”

Rap veterans Kanye West and Jay-Z had released the first track off of their forthcoming album, Watch the Throne, on Facebook but to lukewarm reviews and even more lackluster buzz.

Kanye West x Jay-Z - HAM by uristocrat

Days before the release, West and Jay-Z announced on their Facebook fan pages that “H.A.M.” would be a midnight release via a page dedicated to their joint album.

And soon after, the blogosphere was pregnant with anticipation of the duet single from the rap titans.

Facebook users rushed the Root Music powered “BandPage” for the first taste of Watch the Throne and in the hours following the release, the album page had garnered over 32k fans and hundreds of comments. “H.A.M.” was all the digital hip-hop community could talk about in the small hours of Jan. 11 but the question still remains:

Why Facebook?

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