June 27, 2008

By By Antony Bruno, Denver

Releasing a single for digital download before an album's debut is about as standard these days as making it available to radio.

But in the last few months, labels and artists have begun releasing multiple tracks in advance of an album's street date to promote new releases, relying in no small degree on Apple's iTunes Music Store's Complete My Album feature to convert them into full-album sales-in some cases with striking effectiveness.

Take Lil Wayne's smash hit "Tha Carter III." In a rare move, Universal Motown made six songs available for download in the months prior to its street date, a full one-third of the 18 tracks included on the final iTunes version of the album.

Despite the entire album being leaked online just weeks before its availability, "Tha Carter III" still racked up first-week sales of more than 1 million. What's more, 10% of the album's sales were digital, up from less than 1% for Wayne's past titles. And the most eyebrow-raising statistic? Fifty-two percent of the album's sales on iTunes came through...

Click here for the full story including artists using Complete My Album as a marketing tool, how acts are promoting the feature to fans, conversion data and more.

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