They’ve got 22 Grammys and 140 million in record sales, not to mention their own U2 Way in New York City (the street, it has a name!) and a current week-long residency on Letterman. So why is Ireland’s biggest rock export selling an MP3 version of their new album, No Line on the Horizon, for roughly the cost of a Happy Meal? Even a big chain like Best Buy, which prices many discs at $6.99, would be hard pressed to beat Horizon’s $3.99 digital price on Amazon.
Granted, Bono probably needs another castle in Ireland like he needs the name his mama gave him (when’s the last time anybody actually dared to call him Paul David Hewson?), so maybe it’s just the band’s way of reaching out to the people in tough economic times. Or maybe it’s a super-canny marketing trick. Brit Lily Allen, who garnered cult love and critical accolades with her 2006 debut Alright Still but never quite broke through to the mainstream Stateside, pulled the same under-four-bucks deal on Amazon.com several weeks ago for the debut of her second disc, It’s Not Me It’s You — and promptly landed at No. 5 on the charts. Why shouldn’t it help established (but, in the age of Grammy godzillas Coldplay, not exactly spring-chicken) superstars like U2 power their way to a half-million-unit opening week, as some industry number-crunchers project?
Horizon’s release is also part of a new tiered selling paradigm: The physical CD is selling for $9.99, the limited-edition boxed set with poster and film download is $64.99, and the digi-pack with the same perks is $22.99. Radiohead found great success with their "pay what you like" offer for the 2007 digital release of In Rainbows; then again, they were free agents, without the heavy yoke of physical overhead and label percentages. Here, U2’s label, Interscope, kind of gets the shaft, if the bulk of Horizon’s first week sales go towards that $3.99 buy. And while you may not cry for them, a change in profit margins in an industry already so shaky can’t help but have a trickle-down affect on the smaller, more indie acts the label has on its roster, from Feist (on subsidary Cherrytree) to M.I.A. and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
On the third or fourth hand (which one are we up to now?), U2 may just be acknowledging the pervasive age of piracy. Back in the Joshua Tree days, P2P file-sharing sites like Lime Wire were but a gleam in some baby techie’s eye; today, that stuff spreads like, well, Lime Fire.
So what do you think, PopWatchers? Which price is right for you?
More U2:
U2’s third night on ‘Letterman’: ‘Crazy’ for the Top Ten
U2’s second night on ‘David Letterman’: ‘Magnificent’
U2’s five-night Letterman stand: Will you be watching?
‘No Line on the Horizon’ will premiere on MySpace Music
Comments (1-21) of 21 Add your comment
i think that hardcore fans will buy the CD or box set anyways.. and people who want it cheap will probably download illegally anyways. so i don’t think the amazon deal will have much of an effect.
I really don’t care how much an album of U2 costs, I’ll buy it anyway!!!
Well, I was just really happy to see the brand new album priced so nicely. I check amazon.com’s mp3 specials page every day, and it’s FUN to see new stuff marked way down.
I bought the CD for $3.99 on Tuesday from Amazon. I assumed it was just Amazon trying to take business away from iTunes. It was $9.99 there.
I think it helps them post bigger first week sales, which builds hype. I don’t know if this kind of thing is the retailers choice or the artists choice or the record label/distributors choice. But yeah, regardless I think it sucks that something like this can effect newer, still-building artists like the ones named above.
I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have bought the album for 9.99 for a year maybe. I would have bought one song at a time on download until maybe I thought the whole album would be a good thing to own. But when I was on Amazon and saw it for 3.99, I grabbed it without even thinking.
You know, as much of a U2 fan as I am, I don’t really care for this album and would have been annoyed at the $10 spend, but as of now I’m cool with a $4.00 hit.
I was on the fence about getting this album, but then the price convinced me! And I’m glad, I’m enjoying it.
I’m right there with you, Dawn: I also check Amazon’s MP3 Specials EVERY day. It really is fun/addictive to see what older albums are (usually) going for $1.99 and what brand-new albums are (usually) going for $3.99. Because of Amazon, I’ve bought more music in the past year than any year ever in my life, which is saying a lot for me. Amazon ROCKS!
I think Amazon is selling it at a loss to get new customers and help grow their share of the music download market. I don’t think Interscope set that price.
I downloaded the album for 4 bucks, and if it weren’t priced so low, I may have not bought it at all… or I may have found an alternative method of procuring it . So that’s $4 in their pocket they wouldn’t have otherwise received.
I did buy it just cause it was 4 bucks. Cause if the album goes above 10 dollars, then I go to pirating sites for free.
I was going to go out and buy the CD but the $3.99 vs $9.99 in stores and Itunes this was a easy choice .I like Ellipsian and Dawn buy lots of mp3’s through Amazon and avoid Itunes if I can.
(That was one of the (worst) blogs I’ve ever read. I’d be (hard)pressed to find (any) more (parentheses) for silly (unfunny) jokes and (useless) information.)
As for U2? They had no problem selling pre-orders for their album download at 9.99 and up. And then they go sell it for 3.99. All I have to say, as a life long u2 fan:
Thank you to who leaked it (their record company).
Oh I forgot to mention the 64.99 (limited) edition? With a poster(!), the same songs, and a video we’ll see on youtube? Please. Embarrassing. As someone so eloquently stated in Hawaii in 2006: “Next Time U2 opens for Pearl Jam!”
I have to admit that I’m going over to Amazon right now to buy it rather than waiting for the library to get it in (and be on the long wait list for it). If it were priced any higher, I probably wouldn’t have bought it at all–and if they hadn’t been on Letterman all week, I probably wouldn’t have known they had a new album out. So all of this is a great idea from their publicists to get the word out there.
What’s to think about? Selling it for $3.99 is basically giving it away for free. Only a dope would go to a store and purchase this if they could get it for $3.99 online. Nobody wants the more expensive limited-edition set anyway. I hate all the bells and whistles groups put into “limited edition” packages – they just end up gathering dust and taking up too much space.
Amazon Rocks! I am hard pressed to buy anthing on itunes anymore. At the end of last year Amazon put its 50 best albums of 2008 on sale for 5.00. I got albums such as Lady gaga, She&Him and Flight of the Concordes. I think this is a way to say thank you to fans and make buying music easier in these hard economic times. It cost hardly anything for a digital download and thanks to amazon’s daily deal and there 5 for $5 weekends I too have bought more (digital) music this past year than ever before.
Here’s the thing: is it better for them to get some money while people download it for $4, or to get no money while people download it for free because they don’t want to pay the price of a CD?
I’m not the biggest U2 fan, but I have some of their music, and at $4 I’m at least inclined to take a look where I wouldn’t before. I think it’s a good move on their part.
Used to be a U2 fan but in recent years feel its all hype, at whatever price. Even Eno now admits he doesn’t like their newer output. I won’t pay for it at any cost this time around.
I assumed this had nothing to do with U2 and more to do with the ongoing price war between Apple and Amazon for the digital download dollar. I don’t remember EW commenting when Madonna’s new album appeared for $3.99 in 2008.
I think the U2 album is $9.99 on itunes, so the $3.99 price is probably subsidized by Amazon in an attempt to get market share from Apple. Amazon also sold the latest Killers and Coldplay albums for around $3.99-$4.99. I think U2 probably get paid the same price from Apple and Amazon.