Jay-Z - 4:44 (New album)

[mAlAkAz]

Here are the 3 Bonus Tracks from the CD
Adnis
https://clyp.it/eyp1bdby
We Family
https://clyp.it/hvr4widn
MaNyfaCedGod
https://clyp.it/qb0ed4bp

[Rame]

TSA have you even taken pictures with a money phone when you were young and reckless?

I wonder what it's like.

[Mumm Ra]

Isn't the album basically free though?
How does platinum work in 2017.

not basically - it is free. but yeah they need to fix their platinum requirements, it makes no sense to go platinum off a free product. Thats pretty retarded really - he hasn't sold a single copy lol. I could see if it cost each person $1 to stream a song and he had 1.5 billion people purchase a stream, but that didnt happen.

[Rame]

Streaming subscriptions are not free tho. Whether it be paying a fee or listening to commercials, money is made.

[Mumm Ra]

that crossed my mind too. but if you consider that then every artist available on the streaming subscription would be platinum by default, the second they put an album available

[Mumm Ra]

actually idk if that makes sense. but its still not an accurate depiction of 'sales' IMO, you could accidentally click on a free song and all of a sudden that's considered them selling an album. or spam streams to inflate the numbers. im sure 1.5 billion PEOPLE didnt stream that album

[food for thought]

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-40517529

But then Variety magazine noticed something odd: The photograph of Jay-Z receiving his platinum award was taken before the album was released.

How could the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) be so sure he'd pass the sales barrier?


Well, it turns out that Jay-Z had done a deal with mobile company Sprint (a major shareholder in Tidal), who gave away copies of the album to their subscribers.
Crucially, Sprint paid for each of those copies, making every "free" album eligible for a platinum award; and the RIAA says Jay-Z's label RocNation had to provide evidence that the downloads were in fact initiated by consumers.

But still - the RIAA rules state that the wholesale price of the album only needs to be $2 (£1.55) to register as a sale - so Sprint probably paid Jay-Z less than it would cost to air an advert during the Super Bowl (up to $3.8 million for 30 seconds).

It's almost certain that these downloads are what spurred Jay-Z's album to platinum status. To do it on streaming alone, the album's tracks would have had to be streamed 1.5 billion times, since 1,500 streams of a song count as one "sale" under current chart rules.

Given that Tidal has, at best, 3 million subscribers, each of them would have needed to listen to the album 500 times to push sales over the one million mark - an impossibility in just five days.
The album's performance in the UK - where the album is only available on Tidal - is instructive here. On Monday afternoon, when the Official Charts Company publishes its midweek sales flash, 4:44 hadn't been streamed enough times to make the Top 100.

[ShaDynasty]

He did a similar thing with the previous album, its innovative to make his work into a corporate deal but a bit fucked up and dishonest to basically not sell any records and still go platinum.

I mean hes an older artist now, hes not a cool relevant artist thats going to do big numbers, or even big streaming numbers that are legit.

[Rame]

There you go. Last time he did this with Samsung, right?

100% business move and I guess he earned it but it has nothing to do with what going Platinum stands for.

Good thing the album is dope at least.

[TSA]

jay-z has been so good at manipulating perception that most grown men forget that he has always had a hard time selling records. You don't run into ppl with jay cds even in the early 00s when everyone was selling. There was always rumors of fudging sales numbers. He retired primarily for this reason. With retirement (black album) his sales shot up and he became a legend. Then he came back to capitalize on the new status and we write hip hop history to a new generation. Reasonable Doubt, a norm 90s album, was now a classic and def jam's budget went into building his perception. The albums immediately after didn't do well so he starting using these 'deals' to hop from one 'platinum album' to the other


now that the world is very interested in jay-z's perception, his actual reality is coming to surface (as most heads already know it anyways.). I'm hearing casual listeners realize that Jay-z has offensive lyrics, that he's anti-religion, that he doesn't sell records, and that his albums can be boring AF. Things we've known for ages. Even the 'he's teaching business' shit is stupid because these lyrics have been on his albums for decades. But again, nobody buys them they just act like they did/would

[claaa7]

^ nah i'm not so sure about that, i remember "Hard Knock Life, Vol. II" and "Life / Times, Vol. III" really selling well and being popular as hell so i'm not so sure aobut all that..

i think it's a bit dishonest to go Platinum before the album was even released just because the company he worked with called Sprint bought a million copies. it's not that he just went platinum but he broke some kind of record, i think it was the artist with most platinum albums in his catalouge.

i really like the album.. it's a toss up between "American Gangster" and this but this might have the edge and in that case it's the best Jay album since "The Black Album". working only with NO ID, who is a master at understanding and catering to the specific artist he's working with, made it feel like a classic late 80s album in some ways, when the producer/DJ and MC was equal - like the Eric B & Rakim catalouge, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, and so on.

Here's my review if anyone is interested:

http://claaa7.blogspot.se/2017/07/review-jay-z-444.html

[MaskedAvenger]

Thats a stupid system imo, streaming a album isn't an equivalent to going down to a store and buying a physical copy.

Also, Back in the day Jay-Z bought a few hundred thousand of his own album to make it go platinum, i forgot what album it was.

[hotnikks]

Also, Back in the day Jay-Z bought a few hundred thousand of his own album to make it go platinum, i forgot what album it was.

Prolly RD or Vol. 1

[Rame]

Thats a stupid system imo, streaming a album isn't an equivalent to going down to a store and buying a physical copy.

Also, Back in the day Jay-Z bought a few hundred thousand of his own album to make it go platinum, i forgot what album it was.

How else should anyone go platinum these days? Except for maybe Taylor Swift and JB. No one is buying albums anymore. I'm sure they thought hard about the 1500 streams is one purchase idea. I don't think my cds used to get that many plays tho.

It was SAID that he bought 200.000 copies of Kingdom Come but I don't think there was much proof.

[brock]