Surprise versus anticipation: how Beyonce blindsided the industry, and beat Gaga, Miley, and Katy

While most of America slept, and Australia counted down to the end of the working week, Beyoncé quietly and calmly uploaded her eponymous fifth record to iTunes, and walked away – as the Internet exploded.

14 new songs, accompanied by 17 new video clips – all recorded, completed, sequenced and released in relatively secrecy; an unheard of situation in a marketplace where contingency plans for ‘leaks’ are written into major release rollouts. Beyonce hadn’t been acting completely under the radar, however. Rumours had been swirling for many months that Beyonce was due to announce a record. Her Superbowl appearance earlier this year prompted such whispers, but the occasion was used for a brief regrouping of Destiny’s Child – an act which only served to showcase the gulf between the trio these days – and to announce a world tour apropos of nothing in particular, unless supposed wedded bliss is enough of a concept to hinge a year-long tour on.

A self-indulgent documentary followed, as did guest appearances on records by Jay-Z, Kelly Rowland and 2 Chainz – as well as an Amy Winehouse cover recorded for the Great Gatsby soundtrack. Advertising campaigns for Pepsi and H&M each featured new Beyonce tracks, strengthening rumours that a new record was imminent (neither track made the final album listing), while as recently as a week ago, Columbia’s Chairman Rob Stringer told Hits Daily Double that a Beyonce record was slated for early 2014, stating: “At the beginning of next year we’ve got Broken Bells and Bruce Springsteen. Then we’ve got Lea Michele from Glee coming, and we’ve got Foster the People up next. Then we’ve got Pharrell and Solange, and obviously, at some point Beyonce will put a record out, and when she does it will be monumental. So we’re in really, really good shape.”

Whether Stringer was being coy or whether he really had no inkling of Beyoncé’s release plans is unclear, although this wouldn’t have been the first time Beyoncé acted surreptitiously to avoid label interference: her 2006 album B’Day was recorded across four studios in less than three weeks, with only Columbia A&R Max Gousse being privy to the sessions. At any rate, all the misinformation, rumours and projections surrounding Beyoncé all took one element as granted: that there would actually be a pre-release announcement, and some form of roll-out.

Beyoncé’s midnight (depending on your timezone) drop might not be the first of its kind, but it’s certainly slated to be the most commercially – and culturally – successful to date. Radiohead, long-time pioneers of using the net to explore alternative delivery and payment systems, released their February 2011 record The King Of Limbs independently, but still gave fans five days notice. My Bloody Valentine finally released their forever-delayed follow up to 1991’s seminal shoegaze record Loveless this February – the few hours notice they gave fans after 22 years of waiting may have seemed slight, but there was at least a pre-release announcement. Information can travel far in a few hours – as MBV discovered when their website crashed for a number of hours, and as Beyoncé’s midnight iTunes release showcased.

Now, less than three days since the release, the album seems slated to debut at #1 this week in many territories around the world, including the US. While the record will be an unqualified sales success, it may also usher in an era where pre-release campaigns are curtailed or cut altogether. It would certainly negate a lot of needless expenditure in an era where lavish campaigns – while not at the ridiculous levels of ‘80s spending – still seem like an expensive hangover from a dying model. 2013 has seen a lot of silly money thrown at pre-release promotional campaigns that often push the artist past saturation point, risking backlash and fan fatigue, before the record that all the hoopla is ostensibly in support of is even released. Take the excessive lead up to Lady Gaga’s Artpop, which was rumoured to have cost somewhere in the ballpark of $25M, and included art installations, interactive multimedia apps, and a number of expensively-staged performances. Not to mention the relentless year-long online roll out, with Gaga teasing information regularly, all but hailing herself as the second coming and Artpop as a new format, a new universe to explore. None of it was enough. Artpop shifted just over 258,000 copies in the US during its first week, well short of the projected 350,000. It sold just over 15,000 copies in Australia during the first week. The record is yet to sell Gold in either territory.

The other two big female pop acts this year, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, both benefitted from huge pre-release campaigns. Miley’s was centred less around paid promotion and more around performance: a series of cringeworthy/brilliant public displays, her affinity for hip hop and that dance move, a propensity for nudity, and basically the thrilling sensation that the wheels were about to fall off at any moment. This all made Miley Cyrus ubiquitous around the release of her first ‘mature’ offering: Bangerz, and undoubtedly drove sales – but it also ensured that her actual music was the last thing being discussed.

Katy Perry, on the other hand, announced her album Prism with an 18-wheeler gold-platted truck, emblazoned with the album name and release date, which whizzed around Los Angeles for a few days before being collected by a drunk-driver. It was an expensive exercise, especially considering the message was always intended to be spread freely via online channels – despite the very IRL messaging – and, save for a few E!-style news-blasts, had roughly the same impact as a simple online announcement. Both records had slightly better first weeks in the US than Lady Gaga (285K and 270K) – all three records also benefitted from strong lead singles flooding radio in the weeks before release.

Two of hip hop’s biggest mainstays, Jay-Z and Kanye West, employed shorter promotional lead times – Kanye in particular adopted a seemingly slighter campaign which echoed Gaga’s for innovation, if not excessive expenditure. Projections on buildings around the world, and a series of television performances were the only real pre-release tools used; the lack of album artwork or a lead single to promote the record, coupled with the fact the album was recorded just two weeks out from its release date, suggested a winding back of the traditional promotional run, keeping in line with the minimalism aesthetic that ran through the album. Jay-Z’s 2013 album Magna Carta Holy Grail was only announced three weeks out from release date – albeit via an expensive advertisement during the NBA Finals. However, a savvy deal made with Samsung saw the mobile carrier cop all the costs, as well as causing RIAA and Billboard some headaches due to its very 2013 delivery system. The mode of distribution may have been groundbreaking, but the promotional push was vintage: print advertising, TV spots, and a major corporation controlling the purse-strings.

Beyoncé’s US sales, less than three days in, are sitting at more than 430,000. They will hit half-a-million by the day’s end. This almost guarantees her the #1, unless Taylor Swift pulls a similar move in the next few hours (she won’t). More compelling though, is that this was achieved with no pre-release campaign, no teaser videos, no lead single at commercial radio, not even the few hours of warning time My Bloody Valentine gave their long-suffering fanbase. We live in the information age, where a human rights breach in the darkest corner of the world can be beamed across the globe in seconds. Should we really be surprised that Beyoncé – arguably one of the most famous humans on Earth – can release a major record through a major distribution service, and within an hour, millions of people are listening to it? The move also ensures that each listener comes to the album with fresh ears, unburdened by all the online noise that usually surrounds each major release. More importantly, this mode of release makes her album release a Big Event – not merely one element of an elongated PR push.

The enormous amount of goodwill surrounding this move cannot be discounted, either. While strictly not a ’gift’ – the album is very much a product for sale – it is also nice to feel sincerely caught-off-guard by an album’s release, not clubbed over the head by its incredibly innovative genius well before it is even available. Fever pitch anticipation, prompted by months of carefully spaced ’revelations’, was thought to be key to a successful first week of sales. Beyoncé, and the almost-universal glee generated by her midnight drop, has turned this way of thinking on its head. It could very well be a game-changer, but at the very least, it acts as a nice reminder that surprises are still possible, and that maybe not everybody wants to peek at their presents ahead of Christmas.