Memo to Atlantic Records: This isn't going to work.
Spurred by the weird success of Kid Rock's "Rock and Roll Jesus" album after it decided to pull the single "All Summer Long" from iTunes, they've decided to see how far they can push this program by pulling Estelle's hit "American Boy" from the online retailer as well.
Now, forgive me for stating the obvious, but Kid Rock and Estelle are nowhere near alike. The people who got buffaloed into buying Kid Rock's album are older, richer, less tech-savvy and actually know who he is because he's been a star for a decade now.
Estelle, on the other hand, appeals to a younger crowd. They can ask their friends who bought the MP3 to send them a copy since it's been available for months. They know how to find "American Boy" on the P2P sites. And, most of all, they know a ploy to separate them from their cash when they see it.
All that great work that Estelle and Atlantic's promotions staff did patiently pushing the song up the charts and establishing her as a hot new artist is at jeopardy now, essentially on a business-side dare.
"American Boy" was poised to crash the Top 10 last week, but because of the stunt -- and the corresponding lack of sales caused by getting yanked from online stores -- it slipped to No. 36 instead. The demand for the song was so strong that a knockoff version of the track, hastily done by Studio All-Stars, but available at iTunes, debuted at No. 85. (Maybe Atlantic likes this phenomenon since the online knockoff version of Kid Rock's song by Hit Masters is at No. 19 this week, six notches higher on the charts than the original.)
Even if this strategy works and convinces a fraction of "American Boy" fans to take a chance on Estelle's album "Shine," it still taints the purchase with the uneasy feeling of getting forced into it – a pity seeing as "Shine" is one of the year’s best albums and is already a finalist for the Britain’s Mercury Prize. If it fails, it cheats Estelle out of a Top 10 hit - or more - for no good reason.
And, in case the good folks at Atlantic have forgotten, this exact strategy is what gave rise to the P2P networks in the first place back in the late ‘90s when record companies refused to release singles to force fans to buy certain albums. It worked for a while, but many just stopped buying anything at all, music fans who have yet to return to the fold.PHOTO: Atlantic Records
UPDATE: According to Soundscan, the first week of the experiment resulted in a 9 percent increase in sales of Estelle's "Shine," taking her to No. 128 for the week on sales of 4.584.