Whatever way you slice it, the release of Anti, Rihanna’s eighth studio album, has been a shambles. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it has been a disaster, especially as the recorded music industry finds itself in the middle of a huge recalibration of what does and what doesn’t count as success.
The shambolic part of it relates to precisely how it was released. It’s a yawning three years since Apologetic, breaking the singer’s near-perfect run of a new album a year since Music of the Sun in 2005 (excluding that little anomaly when there was no new album in 2008). For the first time in her career she’s taken a substantial break between records and, perhaps wary of jumping back on to the promotional treadmill, she and her team could be accused of overthinking things.
Anti is an album she has been talking about or alluding to for many months, all the time refusing to confirm a precise release date. She unveiled the artwork back in October at the Mama gallery in Los Angeles (intended subtext: this is a very serious and artistic project, thanks). The next month, shelaunched an incomprehensible website, ANTIdiaRythat was part “immersive” trailer and part marketing platform for Samsung. Still no release date, though.
On 25 January she tweeted a picture of herself wearing gaudy headphones with the tag “listening to ANTI” followed, for some reason, by a balloon emoji. The anticipation was building for a 29 January release but then the wheels came off two days early. Anti suddenly appeared on Tidal, the streaming music subscription service she has a stake in and acts as a celebrity ambassador for. Except it wasn’t supposed to.
Tidal initially blamed a “system error” and pulled it, trying to laugh it off. Rihanna then took a decision to make it available to download for free. Another Tidal representative, however, told Spin that it was an error caused by Universal, parent company of Rihanna’s label, Roc Nation. Angry finger pointing ensued. On Tuesday, she announced that the album was available on iTunes.
Maybe it was all meticulously planned to play out this way but it really makes you wonder if “pig’s ear” was the marketing angle from the off.
Even so, Rihanna was not technically out of pocket for these free downloads, as a deal with Samsung had already paid for 1m copies to be given away as part of a promotional push, linking into a wider branding deal estimated at $25m.
Having a major brand bankroll free music is nothing new. Groove Armada did it with Bacardi back in 2008 but the most direct parallels here are Jay Z giving away 1m copies of Magna Carta Holy Grail in July 2013 to owners of certain (them again) Samsung handsets and U2 offering Song Of Innocence to every iTunes customer in September 2014. The Jay Z album was deemed a success but the U2 album faced a huge backlash, prompting Apple to release a software workaround for those customers who didn’t want itbut still found it pushed on to their iPhones and iTunes libraries.
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