Music star Beyoncé released her self-titled album this
past Friday at Midnight. The 14 song, 18 video album (17 if the credit
video doesn’t count) was released without any promotion, warning, ad, release
single, social media tease… nothing. She just posted an Instagram video with
the caption “surprise”. Then the news spread throughout social media. By Friday
afternoon, the online world was ablaze with amateur reviews, wonderful
hilarious GIFs, and tweeted lyrics. By today, Keith Caulfield of Billboard.com
wrote “Beyoncé’ Fastest-Selling Album Ever In iTunes Store: 828,773 In Three Days”. The article also reports the album “also set a record for the largest
week ever for an album” in the iTunes store. The album is exclusive to iTunes
for now and will be released elsewhere by Dec 20.
This is not a review of the album (it’s great) but a
reflection of the way an un-promoted album is able to sell extremely well. It
would be easy to say that Beyoncé is just that good of an artist to pull such
numbers but I see that other factors contributed to her album's success. The three factors I found in its success are social media presence, the
art of suspense, and packaging.
Social media
Slowly, Beyoncé built up her social media accounts - she created
an immersive site tied to her Tumblr account, a twitter account (she barely
uses) and an Instagram account. Instagram is her most active social media
account; she posts mostly pictures from tours, vacations, and fashion moment.
Her fanbase, coined affectionately as the Beyhive, is also very active online.
Also take into account that, at times, news can travel faster via social media than
through traditional online news media. Put this all together… when Beyoncé drops
her album on iTunes and announces via her Instagram, the news travels via her
Beyhive, then gets retweeted/blogged to other non-Beyhive accounts just like
any other news, and thus social media does a better job of promoting an album
then traditional album promoting. But this is because Beyoncé is very active
and has a very interactive broad fanbase. I’m sure someone on her team did
research to find the depth of her social media reach, which is what all marketing
research teams should be doing for their clients/companies.
The art of suspense
Beyoncé’s been touring since April 2013. Her tour was
heavily promoted and still is as she continues to tour worldwide. It’s typical
for artists to release new albums before or during a tour. I consider this tour
her 8-month promotion and 8 months of crazy suspense for her fans. It was obvious that at some point she would release an
album – many were waiting. A surprise album was all they needed but an album plus music videos is pure sugary icing. The elation many felt at the
release of her album was expressed throughout social media.
Packaging
Beyoncé released 14 never-before-heard songs with the videos
to match and a bonus video (2 songs were each broken down into 2 videos). For
some, the music video (if done right) is just as important to the music
experience as the music itself. For her fans and curious listeners, the package
was enticing. It was priced perfectly – high enough that it wasn’t cheap for
the label but low enough to make sense for all that one got from the album. I
can’t recall a recent artist that has released an album with music videos to
match every song (if I’m wrong, let me know) or even did videos after the album
release for every song on their album. Makes me wonder if Beyoncé is further
helping to kill the music channel. With video streaming sites allowing signed
and unsigned artist to release music videos and now an artist releasing all their music
videos with their album, what is the purpose of a music channel? Digressing…
The right combination of factors is helping ‘Beyoncé’ become
a monumental success and break records. I don’t think she will be the only artist
that can achieve this but she will be one of the few. For other artists, they
will also have to come up with the right factors to attempt a surprise album.
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