Target Begs to Be Heard in John Legend Subway Promotion

Retailer Offers Exclusive Album in Physical and -- Wait for It -- Digital Form

Posted by Mike Tunnicliffe and Charlie Moran on 01.23.08 @ 10:35 AM

Target is finally pushing its presence in the digital music space with a promotion around a new album from John Legend, "Live From Philadelphia." The disc was launched exclusively in Target stores last week and is also available in DRM-free MP3 format through Sony BMG on Target.com. The album download -- a la carte purchases are not available -- contains 19 tracks and retails for $9.99.

Go ahead, plug in. It's a John Legend Target subway poster.

The launch is featured on interactive subway billboards in the NYC subway that have fully functional headphone jacks embedded into them; plug in your earbuds, and you can hear samples of various tracks on the disc as well as a short message from the artist himself. Songs for Soap found one of the Peterson Milla Hooks-designed displays at the Third Ave. L-line stop, where it was flanked by more enormous (non-functional) John Legend posters. Pepsi has used similar technology in Canada, and Target had a nearly identical display last year for an exclusive dance compilation.

Target has maintained a steady presence in the physical album market but has thus far stayed away from digital downloads, an arena in which other giant retailers like Amazon and Borders are now stepping into. According to a story in Digital Music News, a Target representative said the initiative may serve as a template for the future and that the retailer has been "a sleeping giant in the digital space up until now."

1 Comment

By penguinses | norfolk, VA January 26, 2008 12:53:07 am:

Here's a question: what value is there in/ or how does one put a value on domain names relating to the topic of the digital music scene? Specifically, the whole thing with drm free mp3s?

Now there's been quite a bit of news on this, as you may know, lately. Super Bowl ad/Justin Timberlake// Pepsi and Amazon, not to mention the major labels trying to figure things out. I mean, now Yahoo! Music looks like they're getting involved. Big bucks behind the football ads... the give-away itself will be valued at as many as 1 billion songs from Amazon MP3.

With a quote like this: ""MP3 music is the future of the industry and Pepsi Stuff is an accelerator," Danny Socolof, president of Las Vegas-based MEGA, Inc., the company that is managing the promotion, said in a statement." [ http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3721576] how do you value/appraise these?

So, if one had names like:
drmfreealbum.com
drmfreealbums.com
drmfreedownload.com
drmfreedownloads.com
drmfreemp3.com
drmfreemp3s.com
drmfreemusic.info
drmfreemusicdownloads.com
drmfreesongs.com
drmfreetrack.com
drmfreetracks.com

Just curious; wanted to start a conversation. Wonder how many eyeballs the Super Bowl gets? I don't really even watch football.
References:

http://news.google.com/news?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&ch annel=s&hl=en&um=1&tab=wn&q=%22drm+free+mp3%22+&btnG=Search+News
http://news.google.com/news?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&ch annel=s&hl=en&um=1&tab=wn&q=%22drm+free+mp3%22+super+bowl&btnG=Search+ News

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