Bow Down to the Queen!
It was a bold move; releasing a full album with videos for each song all at once on iTunes without any sort of pre-album advertisement. Both Parkwood and its partner Columbia Records have taken on a huge shared risk and guess what, it worked! In 2013, Beyoncé unexpectedly released her fifth studio album on a Friday morning ahead of Christmas making it the perfect Christmas gift, it was so perfect that iTunes crashed. Evidently Beyoncé’s strategy was a success for Queen B selling 828,773 copies during the first 3 days (Apple, 2013) but could it be replicated by other artists?
Assuming that such a bold move is being considered by another artist, there is an important pillar to this success that needs to be given serious credit; Beyhive (Beyoncé’s fanbase). It is the culture that Beyoncé have built and worked on over the years that is considered the main ingredient to this success as no amount of money, strategy or creativity could defeat a powerful culture. After all as Peter Drucker says, “culture eats strategy for breakfast” especially one that is built over a decade. During the first 3 hours Beyoncé sold 80,000 and mentions of her on Twitter hit between 500,000 to 1.2 million in the hours after the release (Watercutter, 2013), she broke the internet and we were happy about it!
In addition to having an equivalent of a Beyhive (good luck trying by the way), artists need to surround themselves with people they would trust the most; not a team but a tribe. A tribe will protect you, a tribe will not fail you and a tribe will not sell you out. Beyoncé did not want leaks and one way to ensure there are no leaks is to keep the plan within the remits of her tribe; Parkwood. Only a few from Columbia Records and Apple knew about the plan but the producers, the musicians and directors had no idea of what was going on; they just contributed to the different songs and videos. This tribe mentality and trust is insanely difficult to find in the music and entertainment industry but Beyoncé was able to establish that because the minute you think of betraying her trust, you will suffer the wrath of the Queen, her fandom and her connections. Nobody in this industry would want that for themselves, nobody. Her tribe is smart enough not to commit career suicide.
So artists can try and mimic Beyoncé’s strategy but they will most likely fail simply because they would need to have not only a strong fanbase but a powerful global culture that extends beyond geographical borders connected through a Beyhive. In addition to that, as an artist you need to be feared in the industry. Yes, loyalty is better off being organic but let us be realistic, this was driven by both loyalty and fear of what could happen if someone would spill the beans. Artists, please look for another strategy as I doubt anyone can do it but the Queen.
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