Photo

Click on photo to enlarge

A customer checks out Music Store (on a screen) with Apple iTunes at an Apple store in Tokyo in this August 25, 2006 file photo.

DENVER (Billboard) - 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 past 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 the album's release, a full one-third of the 18 tracks included on the final iTunes version of the album.

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

"For artists that have multiple tracks out, if the album is solid and there's an offer that makes sense to consumers, they will use it," Universal Motown senior vice president of digital business development Cameo Carlson said.

The Complete My Album feature is simple: iTunes users who buy single tracks from any given album can opt to purchase the remaining tracks on the set for a prorated price. Apple introduced the option at the end of March 2007 and since has seen conversion rates of around 10 percent.

But those rates could start climbing now that acts like Lil Wayne, Jason Mraz, the Cure and the Jonas Brothers are using the feature as a marketing tool. Rather than just releasing singles digitally in advance and leaving fans to figure out for themselves how to fill in the blanks when the full album is released, these acts are encouraging the practice by explaining how it works via their iTunes profiles, MySpace pages and personal Web sites.

Not long ago, some labels believed that prereleasing even just the lead single as a download before an album's arrival cannibalized album sales. Knowing that the Complete My Album feature can convert pre-album sales to post-street-date purchases is a major factor behind freeing up more prerelease content, Carlson said.

"Traditionally, there's been some concern about how much content gets out there," she said. "Complete My Album definitely helps alleviate some of that concern."

On June 24, the Jonas Brothers unveiled their plans to release four singles from their upcoming album over the course of eight weeks as a sort of countdown to the August 12 street date. Earlier this year, Jason Mraz released 12 songs in a rather complicated combination of two EPs of four songs each, as well as four individual singles.

In many ways, the slow-release strategy resembles what is a standard practice in the videogame industry. Game publishers release screen shots, videos and sometimes even demos for free in the weeks and months preceding a game's release, all of which is designed to generate excitement and demand for the finished product.

Reuters/Billboard