Billboard just revealed the cover of their latest issue, titled Jay-Z’s New Blueprint. Due to all the talk about Jay reaching platinum status before the actual album is out, according to Bill Werde.. it’s not going to count. Read below the details on how the new deal in regards to album charting & record sales is broken down. Even more, check out how legendary rock band Guns N’ Roses connected with Best Buy with a similar game plan a few years back.

“…our role as the chart of record is to set the rules, and hopefully even raise the level of play. It is in this spirit that I say it wasn’t as simple as you might think to turn down Jay-Z when he requested that we count the million albums that Samsung “bought” as part of a much larger brand partnership, to give away to Samsung customers. True, nothing was actually for sale — Samsung users will download a Jay-branded app for free and get the album for free a few days later after engaging with some Jay-Z content. The passionate and articulate argument by Jay’s team that something was for sale and Samsung bought it also doesn’t mesh with precedent.

Retailers doing one-way deals is a fact of life in the music business. When Best Buy committed to and paid upfront for 600,000 copies of Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” in 2008, those albums didn’t count as sales — not until music fans actually bought them. Had Jay-Z and Samsung charged $3.49 — our minimum pricing threshold for a new release to count on our charts — for either the app or the album, the U.S. sales would have registered. And ultimately, that’s the rub: The ever-visionary Jay-Z pulled the nifty coup of getting paid as if he had a platinum album before one fan bought a single copy. (He may have done even better than that — artists generally get paid a royalty percentage of wholesale. If Jay keeps every penny of Samsung’s $5 purchase price, he’d be more than doubling the typical superstar rate.) But in the context of this promotion, nothing is actually for sale.” 

Sources say that his first week in sales will most likely will be around 400-450k, which will give him his 13th No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200. For more, go ahead and read the entire article.

jay-z-samsung-cover-600

Previous post

Soul Khan - Rusted Ghosts feat. Arthur Lewis

Next post

Ultramagnetic MCs - Let The Bars Go