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Tinie Tempah album to get lanyard release
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 22 September 2010
So, every single member of EMI staff, from the Fax man down to the cleaners, yesterday lined up alongside High Street Kensington to show off the latest ground breaking innovation in recorded music. The Tinie Tempah lanyard album. It’s a day that could go down in history.
Yes, ‘Disc-Overy’, the debut album from rather good south London rapper Mr Tempah will not only be available for download, and on CD, but you will also be able to buy it in the form of a souvenir lanyard. It seems marketing types at EMI’s Parlophone label noticed how popular promotional lanyards given out at Tinie Tempah gigs earlier this year proved to be, especially among younger fans, ie the sorts of people who aren’t all that bothered about owning physical albums from the artists they dig.
With that in mind, and I quote, they “worked with EMI’s product development resources and research” to “devise a way to make the album available through a lanyard”. And thanks to all that product development resource and research funded by EMI and their financial backers Terra Firma, Parlophone were able to conceive the brilliant idea of, erm, sticking a download code on the back of the pass hanging from the lanyard. Just like countless other alternative product release gimmicks employed by other labels and artists for years now.
Only slightly stating the obvious, Parlophone’s marketing man Alex Eden-Smith told CMU: “Due to technological developments and music consumption trends, we know that for the thirteen to 24 target demographic the standard CD is losing its appeal as a physical product. We wanted to create an alternative for fans that would sit alongside more traditional formats and expand our commercial reach beyond the conventional music retailers. Tinie’s always pushed the boundaries in what he does and put his fans first; we wanted to reflect this in the way we created the product range”.
The Tinie Tempah lanyard will retail at a price unit between that of a digital and physical album, and will be available from the rapper’s website and, EMI hope, a stack of other retailers. To be fair, while not especially original, the lanyard product is kinda cool and, FYI, the album is utterly brilliant. It will be interesting to see how well it sells, in all formats.
For legal reasons, we should also point out that every member of EMI staff did not parade around Kensington yesterday modelling the Tinie Tempah lanyard. We made that up. Think about it, how could EMI’s product development research team possibly find the time for such frivolities, when they’re so very busy providing resources that state the bloody obvious.
