Yesterday marked the release of Jay-Z's 12th studio album "Magna Carta Holy Grail" and I have listened to it a couple times already but not enough to give you a quality musical review yet. However, I decided to start off with focusing on the album's marketing efforts that have shown a remarkable focus on social media and the Internet in general.

While modern independent artists have been aware of the Internet's power regarding promotion and word-of-mouth Marketing, many of the major labels are still behind when it comes to creating serious buzz with social-media campaigns. Jay-Z certainly has the name and standing to move large numbers without any real Marketing efforts these days, he is widely known as the most successful rapper who turned himself into a brand that ventures in all kinds of entrepreneurial directions. Just recently he started his own sports management division "Roc Nation Sports" that is quickly starting to manage big names like Kevin Durant or Victor Cruz.

While his companion Kanye West decided to go a lowkey, no marketing route for his new release "Yeezus", Jay-Z has decided to change the way that records get released these days with this album. Instead of going on long promotion trips and giving lots of interviews on the release, Mr. Carter decided to hold back any news on the album until less than a month before its actual release date. With every album being leaked more than two weeks before the actual store release, this makes total sense. Since Jay-Z has an ensured hype-guarantee, it is much more valuable for him to keep things together. Without sending out pre-listening records to journalists and keeping a tight lock on the music, he managed to keep the songs off the Internet before they were supposed to come out.

I can't remember the last time when a rap artist was able to avoid an album leak, which is actually pretty sad! Nevertheless, Jay-Z made some remarkable Marketing efforts in the short time leading up the release of "Magna Carta Holy Grail".

Viral Videos:
Clearly inspired by Daft Punk's fantastic "The Creator's Project: Random Access Memories", he kicked off the campaign for his new album with a series of videos that featured himself amongst some of the best producers that are out there, namely Rick Rubin, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland and Swizz Beatz. While it has turned out that Rubin sadly wasn't involved with any real production, he served as a source of advice.
In these videos, Jay-Z explained his vision to the other studio members and already gave insights into the meaning of some of his lyrics. This gave viewers all over the world an impression of being integrated into the production process and involved them into the discussion. Instantly, the clips went viral and were the talk of the Internet. Everybody had an opinion on the lyrics, the collaborators and what the album will sound like.

In contrast to Daft Punk's approach, you mostly heard Jay talk about the new project which actually made him more accessible to fans and gave everyone a nice insight into the creative process that goes into an album like this.

Samsung partnership:

In the initial video that started the promotion activities, Jay-Z adressed the fact that the album will be given away for free to the first 1.000.000 downloaders of the accompanying "MCHG"-Samsung Galaxy App which was released in their App Store. This presented a great opportunity for Samsung to gain new users over its strong competitor Apple. However, it didn't mean that Jay would give his album away for free! Moreover, he was ensured 1 million album sales before he even released his album!

The partnership itself would be a great business venture, but the fact that he is actually collecting the money from all these album sales is pure genius!

#newrules for the RIAA
After the Samsung partnership went public, the Recording Industry Association of America (short RIAA) stated that the album cannot be certified Platin status upon it's release due to an existing law which stated that album's can onyl attain a gold or platin status after 30 days. This law stemmed from way back when physical copies could actually been returned by brick-and-mortar stores if they weren't able to sell them. However, in our modern times where pre-sales and digital music have become increasingly powerful, these rules seem highly outdated. Jay-Z thought the same and challenged the ruling which eventually overturned the law and has now changed by the RIAA. This move clearly shows what kind of influence Shawn Carter has in the music industry these days!

If 1 Million records gets SOLD and billboard doesnt report it, did it happen? Ha. #newrules #magnacartaholygrail Platinum!!! VII IV XIII
— Mr. Carter (@S_C_) June 17, 2013

He commented on the situation with the tweet above.

Covering Billboard Magazine

In addition to his tweet, Jay-Z was featured on the cover of Billboard Magazine in a fitting Blueprint-style theme. In the interview, he went more into detail on how his new business venture with Samsung can affect and change the music industry. This comes at an interesting time as the traditional Billboard charts have undergone some changes themselves in order to adjust to the Internet's ever-growing influence. After his interview with Jay-Z, Billboard's Editor Bill Werde wrote an online letter adressing some of the possible changes that Jay-Z mentioned. Once again, this might lead up to some interesting changes for the Billboard Charts as well such as including Streaming services.

Overall, the album has already made a big impact on the music scene and was the talk of the town for weeks now. In my second part of the review which I will post in a couple days, I will get to the most important part of the project: the music.