Truly the hardest working woman in show business. I know her fans are thrilled and losing their damn minds. Brilliant move and good for her. I'm still not a fan but respect the hell out of her work ethic.

Musicslave said:

kitbradley said:

Well, she's certainly accomplished what she set out to do - she has people talking about her again, unfortunately.

.

Yeah, yeah...here we go again. Ready or not, get ready to be drenched in everything Beyonce for 2014. I can give credit where credit is due and say the initial move was a brilliant one. (Doesn't have to be first to be that). Managing to keep it a secret is the real accomplishment here. It helped that they didn't distribute the hardcopies to the stores yet. Because if that was the case, rest assured somebody would have spilled the beans by now.

.

No comment on the music yet. Can't listen now. We'll see what the rest of the game plan is. It would be interesting to see if they will eventually focus on one single at a time or not.

Gladys Knight did the almost the exact same thing by releasing an unexpected album over the summer and here she is six months later and people are just now finding out about it. But when Beyonce releases an unexpected album, everyone finds out 6 seconds after it's released.

rlittler81 said:

I'm not a fan or anything, but this is REALLY cool!

Makes a nice change not to have a big star's hype shoved down your neck. She's just done it and released it leaving the audience to decide if they like it or not.

Some of the videos look interesting, I especially like the Madonna inspired 'Haunted'.

Bravo B.

That is it in a nutshell, you are a recording artist do your stuff, promote yourself stop all this mass media crap, put your shit out and who buys it cool, who doesnt who cares case closed.

Shawy89 said:

I respect her for breaking a new ground and releasing this "out of the blue" but c'mon, why people are reacting like its the first time an album has videos for all its songs, Béy did that with 4 and it all went bad, I think this will be over-hyped for a week maximum then people will get over it, like, this isn't Thriller afterall, Adele is on her way.

Common also made videos for all his songs on his The Dreamer, The Believer cd

of a couple years ago. I listened to snippets of some of the songs. It sounds like

the same stuff she's been doing. I guess you have to be a fan to get into it. I can't.

'BLOW' reminds me of Prince's style of music.

All the Video rushes are such a tease - so lush.

She's so F'n beautiful.

Red said:

well, the song actually has that "breath effect" Prince did on Sexy Dancer...

Javi said:

Don't forget that the artist that made this the first was David Bowie with his astonishing comeback early this year. Not Kanyes or Jays. Just Bowie.

Yup.

Beyonce.

Nick Farrell Photography/Courtesy of Columbia Records

*

Thursday night — just as Twitter was coming down from Scandal's midseason finale, and it's hard to think of this as a coincidence — Beyonce dropped an album out of nowhere. The news ricocheted through social media. People called it Bey Day and Christmas come early. In a Facebook post, Beyonce herself tied it to "Thriller," the 13-minute-long video that premiered on MTV in December 1983, when she was 2 years old.

*

How did one of pop's biggest stars pull off the entertainment world's version of an October surprise? All Things Considered host Melissa Block spoke with Jason King, musician and professor at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music about the album's sudden release. "It feels very social," King says. "This is very much in line with what's happening right now in marketing, which is this idea of marketing without marketing, or anti-marketing, where you appear to be just delivering your product directly to the consumer without any mediation. Now, clearly there is mediation from the record label and so on. There had to be — this didn't just appear on iTunes or in retail stores automatically, there's some mediation. But it appears, it feels as if she's giving a gift to her fans right at the holiday gift-giving time. This seems like a direct gift from the celebrity to the consumer, in a way that I think is going to benefit her. She seems extremely altruistic actually for doing this."

*

How did she manage to keep the album's release under wraps? "That itself is a secret," says King. "I'm sure we'll find out pretty soon exactly how she managed to keep this under wraps for so long."

*

*Music fans have long known Beyonce was at work on an album, but as the weeks crept by this fall, most assumed it was scheduled for an early 2014 release — traditionally, the music industry avoids putting out new music at the very end of the year. But, says King, following tradition hasn't worked out so well this year.

*

"This was a very crowded year for pop music releases, particularly from female artists," King says, referring to Katy Perry's Roar, Lady Gaga's ARTPOP and Miley Cyrus' Bangerz. "All of those albums — they spent a lot of money on the marketing and promotion of them, and they did well, but not perhaps as well as the industry predicted or assumed they would. So here you have an instance of, 'Why not try to release something in a very very different way?' With no advance marketing, so you're saving a lot of money. You're riding on the wave of Beyonce's existing success. She's been on tour for about a year. The audience is out there already, waiting for new stuff to come out. But to deliver it in such a way that it's a surprise: It's a shock to people and it becomes an event."

*

The event of it all dulls the sticker shock — if you want new Beyonce songs this week, you have to buy the whole album, which comes with 17 music videos, and it'll cost you $15.99. No 99-cent songs. Journalists and critics haven't had much time to digest the album, but, says King, from what he's heard, the album wasn't made on the cheap.

"I think it's really artful. There's a track with Frank Ocean that I think is a real standout. The videos look fantastic. They're very high-end. This isn't just some quick thing she put together to get it out to the marketplace so that she could have something available before the end of 2013. This is deeply considered music that really does raise the artistic barrier, particularly for R&B this year, which has been not a great year artistically."

And, says King, releasing all the songs together is an old model that's worked recently in other media.

*

"She's basically batch-releasing her videos and her music. In other words, this is very much in keeping with what you see on television now, where Netflix will create an original series likeHouse of Cards and, instead of just releasing one episode at a time, all the episodes are available initially as soon as it launches. You can watch on your own time."

So it's not so much the cloak and dagger routine that makes the release of an unexpected Beyonce album news; it's the innovation in distribution.

"It gives her a kind of auteur, sophisticated status, at least in terms of her relationship to innovation," he says. "We're now going to be able to talk about her in the same way that we talk about a Radiohead, or a Trent Reznor, in terms of their innovation — not with music exclusively, but with distribution. They're distribution innovators."

To be clear, all three of those acts breathe rarefied air. "This is only for the superstar artists. Only for the people who've already been the beneficiaries of a lot of major-label marketing money," King says.

*

Beyonce is notorious for controlling her image; and, in a way, releasing the album the way she has and controlling her own hype, very deliberately, is the ultimate act of control. King points out, though, that that doesn't have to be a negative observation: "It fits into the whole narrative of concealment that surrounds her, but at the same time I don't really consider it to be troubling, so much as just really smart and really savvy. It's very careerist. She's always been a careerist and a pragmatist. She knows what she's going for. She has a very strong career vision as much as she does an artistic vision, and I just see this as being part of that. It's a real gangsta move."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/...m=facebook

2020 said:

Rules her husband instituted Pleaseeeee

#1 in 100 countries.

love the album. it's sexy, mellow.

She accomplished two things that plague any successful musician:

1 - She released a new cd without any reviews beforehand. How often can you get a new batch of music without reading numerous reviews first?

2 - There were no internet leaks.

ADC said:

Now that its out and setting Itunes on fire with a weeklong, album only exclusive.

Starting next week, two singles will be pushed. The Pharrell produced "Blow" to pop & "Drunk In Love" to RnB & Hip Hop.The ballad "XO" By The Dream will follow later in 2014 as the second single to pop...

But Bow Down and Grown Woman were leaked but they received negative reviews.

lastdecember said:

rlittler81 said:

I'm not a fan or anything, but this is REALLY cool!

Makes a nice change not to have a big star's hype shoved down your neck. She's just done it and released it leaving the audience to decide if they like it or not.

Some of the videos look interesting, I especially like the Madonna inspired 'Haunted'.

Bravo B.

That is it in a nutshell, you are a recording artist do your stuff, promote yourself stop all this mass media crap, put your shit out and who buys it cool, who doesnt who cares case closed.

Agree but I think her label saw the success of David Bowie/ Jay Z etc album when they released theirs via Itunes and rolled the dice with Beyonce's. She dumped all her songs all at once because none of the singles were considered strong enough to release seperately. This was a smart move (I will give her team props for that) but I think underneath the hype people have been bamboozled by a PR tactic. Instead of doing great creative songs, she added a bunch of videos along with the songs to distract people from the music (she did the same thing with "4").The music does not speak for itself because it can not stand alone by itself. Its the same boring ass music she always does and the visuals are no different from Gaga/Rihanna which it appears she is trying to copy. I think the succes from this buzz shows that today's pop music is not about the quality of the music itself and more about how it is branded and marketed. I'm still rooting for Janelle though

Since I am always on the lookout for lab dance music, I really, really tried to like a song and no....there's really no good songs, there is nothing catchy at all. I think the reason her team did this is because there are no stand out singles and it's great for publicity and it will do well for now, but the album will likely sink like a stone after next week.

I also think the overwhelming, ridiculous reaction to this album may also be some backlash against Lady Gaga and her ARTPOP album and promotion.

The album was only announced in a final meeting to employees & the producers last Thursday and code-named "Lily" to avoid leeks(which is what I'm most impressed with.)

As for promo plans, Beyonce is in the midst of wrapping up the U.S. leg of her Mrs. Carter Tour, which heads to NY next Thursday. Plans are being finalized for a theatrical screening presentation of the 14 videos. Its all anybody can talk about in the muziq industry. I'm sure even Prince is in awe of her pulling this off.

mjscarousal said:

But Bow Down and Grown Woman were leaked but they received negative reviews.

lastdecember said:

That is it in a nutshell, you are a recording artist do your stuff, promote yourself stop all this mass media crap, put your shit out and who buys it cool, who doesnt who cares case closed.

Agree but I think her label saw the success of David Bowie/ Jay Z etc album when they released theirs via Itunes and rolled the dice with Beyonce's. She dumped all her songs all at once because none of the singles were considered strong enough to release seperately. This was a smart move (I will give her team props for that) but I think underneath the hype people have been bamboozled by a PR tactic. Instead of doing great creative songs, she added a bunch of videos along with the songs to distract people from the music (she did the same thing with "4").The music does not speak for itself because it can not stand alone by itself. Its the same boring ass music she always does and the visuals are no different from Gaga/Rihanna which it appears she is trying to copy. I think the succes from this buzz shows that today's pop music is not about the quality of the music itself and more about how it is branded and marketed. I'm still rooting for Janelle though

The funny thing is that tons of people on twitter and facebook think she is the first artist to ever do something like this. Well shes far from it, when she did a video for every song on BDAY everyone thought it was a first too, NOT. Itunes is even billing this as the "Visual Album" great term because like you said its the visual distraction that gets you, lets face it, she is eye candy. She can complain about that but she uses it to her advantage, she herself in a recent interview that someone had a link to, she says " she doesnt get the song till she has the video in her mind totally" now this is why you have a lack of "songs" on many peoples album, too much focus on what the visual will be. This was a total PR tactic on her terms pretty much, her label i felt wanted nothing to do with this, its quick money, it costs nothing to promote, i mean twitter and Facebook are free, and to reel in the diehards they make the WHOLE album for sale at first, get those initial sales and cash in , before the album can be bought single for single.

Only the most senior executives at Itunes(the album's only exclusive distrbutor) until a physical release on Dec. 21, were clued in on the plans....

alphastreet said:

Beyoncé- NEW RECORD 200k debut + #1 in 100 countries

Quote:

Beyoncé*has just changed the game, as some are asserting (see below), but shes definitely changed the look of next weeks sales chart. At this point, were projecting 200k+ for the albums first three days of availability, enough to push*[/size]Garth Brooks*to #2 . You read it here first.*[/size](12/13a)
*
http://www.hitsdailydoubl...ormill.cgi
*
*
After a stealth Thursday evening (9 p.m PT) release, Beyoncés self-titled fifth solo studio set is likely headed towards a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 when that charts top 10 is revealed on Wednesday, Dec. 18.

The iTunes exclusive visual album, retailing for $15.99, contains 14 tracks -- not available for a la carte purchases until Dec. 20 -- and 14 accompanying videos, along with other bonus video content. As of this morning, no set date has been announced for the CD release to physical retailers or of its availability on other digital download sites

In just a three-hour sales window (closing at midnight Friday PT), Beyoncé reportedly sold over 80,000 copies, according to industry sources. Its still too early to judge what the set will do over the full three days left in the sales tracking week (which ends Sunday night), but with prior projected leader, Blame It All On My Roots: Five Decades Of Influences by Garth Brooks, estimated to shift 150,000-160,000 units, Beyoncé is already halfway that sum. And in the time it would take someone to fly from New York to Miami.

The album release was so heavily guarded, that reportedly only a dozen or so members of her Sony Records family even were aware of the set being pushed to iTunes yesterday evening

Beyoncés last studio set 4 sold 310,000 in its debut week in July of 2011, but that was with a full sales week and a marketing/media push leading up to the release. It is an interesting commentary on the influence of social media in todays world if Beyoncé can come close to that sum with just social buzz driving the project instead of weeks of traditional media promotion normally part of the album release playbook

Shawy89 said:

I respect her for breaking a new ground and releasing this "out of the blue" but c'mon, why people are reacting like its the first time an album has videos for all its songs, Béy did that with 4 and it all went bad, I think this will be over-hyped for a week maximum then people will get over it, like, this isn't Thriller afterall, Adele is on her way.

Yeah but it didnt come out exclusively out the blu with the album for a very good price as well. I mean..we didnt have to wait for a dvd release ..deluxe release or anything..just all in one package for $16.00

Beyonce sent celebrities, stans, & fans into a social media frenzy yesterday

[Edited 12/14/13 16:54pm]

People need to chill on the "Game Changing" talk becuase its not changing the game first of all, what it DID prove is that an aritst with a HUGE following doesnt need mass hype and a label to promote her that is a NO BRAINER, that has been proven since the 90's. Perspective on this people, she still need a label to get the album together, this is not indie, though i applaud not having to hear HYPE from her team, when artists start doing this totally indie I will say the game is changing, or even by breaking down some of the BS that goes on over at itunes too.

Again i applaud the leaving out the mass media and that whole thing, and people saying why doesnt PRINCE do this please cut that out, Prince has not had a mainstream hit since 1994, OK also he is a 55 year old man who is not in the media spotlight even if he did this most wouldnt care, unless musically it was going somewhere.

lastdecember said:

People need to chill on the "Game Changing" talk becuase its not changing the game first of all, what it DID prove is that an aritst with a HUGE following doesnt need mass hype and a label to promote her that is a NO BRAINER, that has been proven since the 90's. Perspective on this people, she still need a label to get the album together, this is not indie, though i applaud not having to hear HYPE from her team, when artists start doing this totally indie I will say the game is changing, or even by breaking down some of the BS that goes on over at itunes too.

Again i applaud the leaving out the mass media and that whole thing, and people saying why doesnt PRINCE do this please cut that out, Prince has not had a mainstream hit since 1994, OK also he is a 55 year old man who is not in the media spotlight even if he did this most wouldnt care, unless musically it was going somewhere.

[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]

[Edited 12/14/13 17:25pm]

HAPPYPERSON said:

Beyoncé- NEW RECORD 200k debut + #1 in 100 countries

Quote:

Beyoncé*has just changed the game, as some are asserting (see below), but shes definitely changed the look of next weeks sales chart. At this point, were projecting 200k+ for the albums first three days of availability, enough to push*[/size]Garth Brooks*to #2 . You read it here first.*[/size](12/13a)
*
http://www.hitsdailydoubl...ormill.cgi
*
*
After a stealth Thursday evening (9 p.m PT) release, Beyoncés self-titled fifth solo studio set is likely headed towards a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 when that charts top 10 is revealed on Wednesday, Dec. 18.

The iTunes exclusive visual album, retailing for $15.99, contains 14 tracks -- not available for a la carte purchases until Dec. 20 -- and 14 accompanying videos, along with other bonus video content. As of this morning, no set date has been announced for the CD release to physical retailers or of its availability on other digital download sites

In just a three-hour sales window (closing at midnight Friday PT), Beyoncé reportedly sold over 80,000 copies, according to industry sources. Its still too early to judge what the set will do over the full three days left in the sales tracking week (which ends Sunday night), but with prior projected leader, Blame It All On My Roots: Five Decades Of Influences by Garth Brooks, estimated to shift 150,000-160,000 units, Beyoncé is already halfway that sum. And in the time it would take someone to fly from New York to Miami.

The album release was so heavily guarded, that reportedly only a dozen or so members of her Sony Records family even were aware of the set being pushed to iTunes yesterday evening

Beyoncés last studio set 4 sold 310,000 in its debut week in July of 2011, but that was with a full sales week and a marketing/media push leading up to the release. It is an interesting commentary on the influence of social media in todays world if Beyoncé can come close to that sum with just social buzz driving the project instead of weeks of traditional media promotion normally part of the album release playbook

Childish Gambino got in the top 5 albums? go him! that's my boy :')

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

lastdecember said:

People need to chill on the "Game Changing" talk becuase its not changing the game first of all, what it DID prove is that an aritst with a HUGE following doesnt need mass hype and a label to promote her that is a NO BRAINER, that has been proven since the 90's. Perspective on this people, she still need a label to get the album together, this is not indie, though i applaud not having to hear HYPE from her team, when artists start doing this totally indie I will say the game is changing, or even by breaking down some of the BS that goes on over at itunes too.

Again i applaud the leaving out the mass media and that whole thing, and people saying why doesnt PRINCE do this please cut that out, Prince has not had a mainstream hit since 1994, OK also he is a 55 year old man who is not in the media spotlight even if he did this most wouldnt care, unless musically it was going somewhere.

[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]

[Edited 12/14/13 17:25pm]

His last hit single was "Most Beautiful Girl" and by HIT i mean on more than one chart not just RB, after that "I hate U " was his last top 40 single, nothing after that hit top 40 on a mainstream chart. Album wise he has had varied success but most releases have peaked and dropped quick not sustaining any attention at all, exception being Musicology but that was attached to a tour and a ticket scheme that gave it a top 10 position, he was cashing in on 20th anniversary of Purple Rain doing a so called farewell tour, he is going to be doing this once again i think we will see in 2014, but he is not a mainstream artist at all and him putting out an album tomorrow with no hype would NOT be an event.

The only two songs I'm feeling from this album are Grown Woman (totally great, African influences, repeating the good formula from The End of Time - only it was released only as a video), and Glow - UNTIL Timbaland started saying something silly ad nauseum at the end of the song - . I'm a fan, but I'm feeling this will turn out her weakest (quality-wise) album FOR SURE. Besides, what is that song Drunk in Love?? I found it awfull, regardless being an attempt to a follow-up to Crazy in Love (in which it greatly FAILED).

And what about the singles? Will she promote any song? Or next week some 8-10 of the albums song will chart (like happened to Lil Wayne, Drake and Eminem for instance) and all disappear the follow weak? I hear no HIT on the album...

[Edited 12/14/13 19:10pm]