Not that she needs some help to sell her super-duper new album (according to everybody else but me), but Target is snubbing Beyoncé!! Yep! You won’t see her new album in the aisles of the popular chain and this is why:
‘At Target we focus on offering our guests a wide assortment of physical CDs, and when a new album is available digitally before it is available physically, it impacts demand and sales projections’, explained Target spokesperson Erica Julkowski to Billboard, ‘While there are many aspects that contribute to our approach and we have appreciated partnering with Beyonce in the past, we are primarily focused on offering CDs that will be available in a physical format at the same time as all other formats. At this time, Target will not be carrying the Queen Bey’s new self-titled album ‘Beyonce.’’
Interesting, but kind of ridiculous, the album has already reached some sales records (617,000 copies sold in the US and 828,000 worldwide through Sunday) in the iTunes Store after being only 3 days on sale, so if Target wanted to ‘punish’ Beyoncé for selling her album digitally before making it available to physical retailers, they look totally stupid! They aren’t gonna hurt her at all.
What do they mean by partnering with Beyoncé in the past? Remember, her previous album, ‘4’, had a Target exclusive version with 6 bonus tracks, so this time, they feel cheated because of the iTunes exclusive? How is this different? Target had an exclusive too, now it’s iTunes turn… And what can you do, iTunes probably paid more than the chain store!
Target is only gonna hurt itself, Seeing how this album is selling, she could sell it only on the internet and still set record sales… who is still buying CDs anyway? Very few people, right? So what’s the point, they should carry it, and sell these 10 copies that Walmart is now gonna sell. We live in the digital age and it’s a shame that Target hasn’t understood this yet.
But you could also see Target move as a warning for other artists who don’t have Beyoncé’s worldwide appeal, and may suffer from being excluded from Target stores? At the end, it really doesn’t matter anymore, in a short while Target won’t be selling CDs at all.