Breaking Bad. Orange Is the New Black. Beyoncé.
We covered last week how Beyoncé’s surprise release of her self titled album undermined existing marketing paradigms. But Beyoncé may have also created a blueprint for the future of profitable album releases. According to this MTV article by Craig Flaster, the record breaking success of Beyoncé has more in common with House of Cards than Yeezus. Beyoncé, after all, was billed as a “visual album” and came with 17 music videos. And where there are videos, people will binge-watch.
Binge-watching is as much part of the modern day human experience as retweeting or liking Facebook statuses. This is the nerve that Beyoncé hit. It’s funny how people will either watch a six second GIF or six hours of TV shows, with no middle ground. It’s like a Houston Rockets shot chart in real life, with us trying to be entertained in the most efficient way. Our viewing habits are either shooting 3’s or dunking. Mid-range jumpers, those 30 minute weekly episodes that were once so fundamental, lead to Twitter obscurity.
:: Answer our Quora question and tell us what artist has the most binge-watchable music videos?.
iTunes Exclusivity – The X-Factor
Leaks have arguably become the biggest part of an album’s release. Downloading an album two weeks before it comes out, and tweeting “this shit is a classic” having listened to two songs is The Event. But trending topics don’t add up to record sales, especially for an album that the public can’t even purchase.
iTunes’ first week digital exclusivity for Beyoncé not only prevented Leak Night on Twitter, but also controlled the way it was consumed by forcing fans to purchase the entire album. Without any singles, each video became its own episode, and each episode adding to the larger narrative of Beyoncé. Record sales, a throwback to the “good old days” when albums were albums, digital and artistic innovation – everyone gets what they want (except for Target and Amazon). This isn’t Netflix, this isn’t music – this is exclusive binge-watching.
2 For the Visual Music Future
Beyoncé set a high standard for future visual albums, using more than 16 directors, with settings from Cuba to Brooklyn. While many artists don’t have the financial backing of Beyoncé to create this ambitious a project, it’s not impossible.
Besides, Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d. city is already a movie. The album’s coming of age story is a genre as old as narrative itself. In that sense, good kid, m.A.A.d. city has as much in common with Samm in Freaks and Geeks (available for binge-watching on Netflix) as Killer Mike’s R.A.P. Music that came out the same year (which was cinematic in its own way). Importantly, the album, like Beyoncé, was successful – it debuted at #1 on the Billboard Charts, and eventually went platinum.
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Whereas good kid, m.A.A.d. city is about a narrator coming to terms with the real world, Action Bronson’s Blue Chips 2 is the hurlyburly of internet life thrown against the wall. The mixtape has characters, with Bronson the unreliable narrator, traveling through New York City and 80s music with sidekick Big Body Bes. Set in an expansive city, with a dark, ugly humor finding solace in small truths, Blue Chips 2 was the mixtape season 2 of Eastbound and Down (available for binge-watching on HBO Go).
Maybe I was asking the wrong questions about music all along. I was in high school when Napster was at its peak; then people moved onto Soulseek by the time I entered college. After that, blogs had mp3s…and there were messageboards…and somewhere along the way, we stopped caring. The physical music product, whether CDs or records, was once a symbol that organized us into social groups. TV shows never a badge of cool like listening to underground bands that no one heard of. Television was for the water cooler. Then social media became the water cooler, and we had to watch The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Boardwalk Empire or we couldn’t log onto Facebook or Twitter the entire week.
Even today, conversations begin “Have you seen Season (insert number here) of (insert show here)?” My friend threw a guitar at me when I spoiled who got elected the mayor of Baltimore in season 4 of The Wire, and that was like 5 years after the show had gone off air (I didn’t say anything about Bodie though). This is how Beyoncé subtly changed the music conversation – a conversation we paid $15.99 to be apart of.
For one week in the middle of December, downloading an album felt important. We know that it’s lack of marketing was a significant event for marketing, but the entire package of Beyoncé may have also created a middle ground between digital music and the way people consume. In the 80s, video killed the radio star. But in the 2013, videos could be the radio star’s salvation. And we’ll watch, on our couch, for hours at a time.

“just setting up my twttr” – Jack Dorsey, March 21, 2006
I’m convinced that historians will look back 50 years from now at Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, the first tweet ever tweeted, with the same reverence as Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. And when historians look back 50 years from now, they’ll see that the event that inspired the most tweets per minute was not a Super Bowl, a New Years celebration, or a Presidential election, but the surprise release of Beyoncé’s self titled album in 2013.
Beyoncé announced the release of Beyoncé with a single Instagram video post. That was it – no billboard signs, no advertisements, and no press releases. In a year where the announcement of an album release reached cinematic levels, Beyoncé completely bypassed this step. No one knew she was even recording an album. But with the confessional, 24 hour nature of blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, surprise may be the last frontier of marketing.
This type of viral campaign isn’t limited to music. Kobe Bryant returned to the Lakers two weekends ago from a torn achilles. The Sunday of his return, he released a two minute video of his #8 Lakers jersey literally weathering the storm (he had 9 pts, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists in his debut).
:: Answer our Quora question and tell us what you think about the Beyonce Release.
Meanwhile, the box score of Beyoncé, courtesy of Mashable:
– there were 1.2 million tweets in the 12 hours after the release, which is more impressive since it was released late at night (so people stayed up all night listening to the album and tweeting. Then again, I stayed up all night and tweeted when the Yeezy 2’s were released two summers ago – I get it)
– there were 5300 tweets per minute, which beat the previous record held by Sharknado
– Beyoncé sold 828,773 copies in three days. The 617,213 domestic downloads broke iTunes first week record sales
All with one Instagram post.
Yeezus to Magna Carta Holy Grail to Beyoncé
We should have seen this “no marketing” approach coming, especially in the context of Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail advertising campaigns (not to mention randomly releasing albums is status quo for Death Grips).
The release of Yeezus was the most traditional of the three. We knew the album was coming out at some point last summer through a series of tweets from Kanye’s account. We just didn’t know what/where/when/how/why. The video projections of New Slaves across 66 cities around the world caught us off guard (and went viral). But we were mentally ready, silently preparing our funniest tweets for the day the album leaked.
But two days before the release of Yeezus, a commercial aired during half time of game 5 of the NBA Finals. The black and white commercial started off with Jay-Z (is that Jay-Z?) standing on an apartment balcony. Then, the frame cuts to Timbaland (dope), Rick Rubin (damn), Swizz Beatz (yup) and Pharrell (oh shit – is this a art project?) in a studio, while Jay-Z discusses his new album (wait – what?) set to release on July 4th (we can play it at my BBQ!)
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And as unique as a black and white, three minute commercial sponsored by Samsung during the NBA Finals is, Magna Carta Holy Grail was dropping…in three weeks…and we didn’t know Jay-Z was even recording an album. And whereas Jay-Z used the Samsung Galaxy 4 and the NBA Finals to conquer the music industry, and Kanye West used a Le Corbusier lamp and leather jogging pants to conquer interviews, Beyoncé used Instagram, Twitter and iTunes to conquer infinity.
A Visual Album: An Addendum
Beyoncé was an iTunes only digital release for $15.99. Without an option to download individual songs, the move straddles the line between the “old days” of CDs and cassettes, and today’s digital downloads age. The 14 tracks were accompanied by 17 music videos, thus elevating the album from just music, to an event.
Taking cues from the art world is nothing new in hip hop, and Beyoncé is right on track. With a digital booklet that features photo stills, sparse text, and a wide range of videos, the album is performance art. This turns buying Beyoncé (and Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail, amongst others) into something tangible, like buying an art piece. But this painting only costs $15.99.
And while digital files don’t make good coffee table books, Instagramming pictures that your Beyoncé download is at 30% serves the same purpose. The most popular hip hop albums of the year, from Jay-Z to Drake to Macklemore to Kanye West, bridged the gap between consumer’s physical and digital identity. After all, Instagramming an album you’re listening to, or tweeting links to the latest Pharrell video, is more than music – it shows who you are, too.