Digital Home Thoughts: Shakira - Leveraging Digital Sales to Promote CD Sales

"Many music singles are released for sale ahead of their albums to generate early sales and create interest in the full collection. But the opposite was true for the Shakira single "Hips Don't Lie," which broke a digital sales record last week thanks to a cross-media marketing strategy. "Hips Don't Lie," which features the hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, set a record for selling the most copies of a digital song in one week after it was released May 27. The song was downloaded about 266,500 times in its first week on sale, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That broke the previous record of 175,000 copies of D4L's "Laffy Taffy." The single was part of an effort to breathe new life into Shakira's current album, "Oral Fixation Vol. 2," (Epic Records) which was initially released in November without "Hips Don't Lie" on it. When the album appeared to be flagging on the charts, Epic planned to re-release the CD with the new single added to it. But before the re-release, the new single and related tie-ins were promoted on Yahoo Music and were released exclusively to Verizon Wireless customers."



Just goes to show that with the right marketing, you can even use digital music sales to support the sales of CD's. Although, I'd be kind of peeved if I had bought the first version of the CD only to have them redo it because they realized that it was not good enough the first time. They should allow those that already bought the first version to get a free download of the additional song.