Now, the smaller than expected debut isn't what's really out of wack. In it's second full week in stores, YEEZUS tumbled from the pole position as the album had a monstrous 80% decline to 65K. Of all #1 album debuts, YEEZUS has the fourth steepest decline in week 2. From Billboard, the top five drops (not including YEEZUS, which would now be number 4).
How did this happen? Kanye eschewed all traditional forms of album marketing in favor of a "This is What the Fuck I Want To Do" type of campaign. It fits with the album because that's a major theme throughout YEEZUS, but the majority of America never heard, and still hasn't heard, any of the material. The album's been out for nearly 3 weeks (if you count the leak time) and I'm still introducing the album to people who haven't heard anything from it.April 21, 2012 - Madonna, "MDNA" - 86.70% (from 359,000 to 48,000 at No. 8)June 18, 2011 - Lady Gaga, "Born This Way" - 84.28% (from 1.11 million to 174,000 at No. 1)Dec. 3, 2011 - Mac Miller, "Blue Slide Park" - 82.54% (from 144,000 to 25,000 at No. 24)Dec. 16, 2006 - Jay-Z, "Kingdom Come" - 79.42% (from 680,000 to 140,000 at No. 6)Dec. 11, 2010 - Kanye West, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" - 78.14% (from 496,000 to 108,000 at No. 7)
If people still haven't heard the album, either through stream, leaks, bootlegs, word of mouth, people playing it in the car/club/crib, or radio, how can you expect them to purchase it in its second week and beyond?
The way Kanye decided to promote the album was revolutionary, wild, creative, awe-inspiring, genius, and a whole list of other adjectives. But one thing we have to ask ourselves it, "Was it efficient?" I think it was up until the album dropped, and after, it no longer was.
On May 2nd, 6 weeks before YEEZUS came out, Kanye sent out a tweet that simply said "June Eighteenth", and that was the beginning of the promo. Two weeks later, he premiered "New Slaves" on the side of 66 buildings in 10 cities, in 6 countries and 3 continents. Kanye made the internet go nuts with technology that was created in the 1920s. Think about that shit. The next day, he performed "New Slaves" and "Black Skinhead" on Saturday Night Live.
And that was it. Kanye didn't release a music video, he didn't do any more nationally televised performances. He didn't send a single to radio. He didn't even release anything through iTunes. In fact, the only incarnations of the music we had was a YouTube video of a half-decent version of "New Slaves" projected onto the side of a building in Brooklyn and the performances from SNL. We didn't have a CDQ of a single song until the album leaked the Friday before its release.
So when you think about it, Kanye did enough to make the internets go wild, which they did, and then...nothing. Why/how did that happen?
Is that an effective way to promote an album?
For someone not of Kanyes stature, sure, maybe. That could work for an independent band with limited resources, but Kanye has the full power of Def Jam behind him. He's not lacking for a marketing budget. Kanye is a big fucking deal, one of the top 20 most popular artists worldwide, I would guess. He's blockbuster status, at the very least.
How did Def Jam fuck this up?
I mean, there's a reason why major movie studios spend the most money marketing their biggest releases. It's because those releases have the best chance of reaching the widest audience. A Kanye album is the same thing. No matter how you feel about him as a person, you can't deny that the dude is one of the best musical talents to hit the scene in the past 25 years. He has not released a subpar album, ever. You may not be feeling YEEZUS or 808s & Heartbreaks, but those albums are still fucking dope. You need a major marketing push when releasing a signature album.
Jay Z is now doing something similar with Magna Carta Holy Grail. He isn't releasing a single before the album drops in 14 hours (July 4th at 12:01am). That's never happened before with a major artist. Shit, that maybe hasn't happened, ever. But the difference? Samsung is spending a crazy amount of money promoting the album and the fact that it's exclusive to certain Samsung devices for the first 3 days of release. THEY HAD A FUCKING 3 MINUTE PROMO DURING THE NBA FINALS, FOR FUCKS SAKE. In additional to all the free internet promo, they've spent a massive amount of money to make sure everyone knows about the album/has heard one of the various snippets in the present within the various promos.
Word is that deal came together in about a month, which means they were likely working on it in May and June while Kanye was promoting YEEZUS. Did they take pointers from that marketing campaign and learned what not to do, which was ignore the enormous financial coffers at their disposal?
I know this is Kanye's "fuck it" album, not from a creative standpoint, but from a commercial stance. No traditional marketing, no video, no single, no album art/cover, no pandering to the masses. By agreeing to Kanye's vision for the album marketing, Def Jam — his record label — left several thousand copies of this album on the floor because, while awareness was high that Kanye had a new album, awareness was terribly low concerning what the album actually sounded like. But was that a mistake? For him, no, but for Def Jam, abso-fucking-lutely.
Def Jam dropped the ball on the promotion of the album. If everyone knows the album is dropping, but no one's heard the music, and thus can't decide if they want to purchase the album or not, that's an epic fucking fail on the part of the record label. I know Kanye is Kanye, and there really isn't any arguing with Kanye, but someone at the label should have said, "Look, we need a single to send to radio, so pick a song off the album and we'll send that. We also need a video, so pick a song, film the video, and we'll release it after the album drops. Whichever song is fine, we just need something to show."
I don't think Def Jam has much to show for their marketing efforts.