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Lady Gaga 99 Cents Album Promo Turns Negative For Amazon & Gaga As Servers Stall

image from ecx.images-amazon.com (UPDATED) We didn't intend to make today's Hypebot All Lady Gaga, All The Time, even though this is release day of her new album. But aggressive brand tie-ins including one with Google and Amazon's decision to sell the entire Born This Way album for 99 cents, have given us lots to write about.  Now I've learned that Gaga's Little Monsters (her name for fans) are buying so many albums, that Amazon's download servers have slowed to a crawl and in some cases not delivering all 14 tracks.  This mess is in turn causing an unintended negative for both Gaga and Amazon, that goes far beyond and a few disgruntled fans.

Dozens of Gaga fans have chosen to show their displeasure by rating the experience on Amazon – and thus the new album's has dropped from 5 to 3 stars.  "Either Cloudplayer is buggy for this download or is just unstable and pointless. I had to send an email to customer Service to get help downloading. And they'll get back to me within 12 hours?!? Its a download service and you can't get back to me any sooner than twelve hours?," wrote one two star reviewer.

"Not able to listen to over half the CD, and I'm not listening to a single track until I can listen to the album as a whole, as that is the way it is supposed to be listened to according to the artist," wrote another fan who gave it one star.

For Amazon, this massive loss leader sale, that was meant to showcase its new cloud music service, has also turned sour. "This is a note to EVERYONE DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT download the album to your cloud drive because it WILL NOT download," wrote an unhappy customer who echoed the concerns of many today.

UPDATE: Amazon acknowledges Gaga problem with this tweet form @amazonmp3: We're currently experiencing very high volume. If you order today, you will get the full @ladygaga album for $.99. Thanks for your patience.

Bruce Houghton on 05/23/2011 in Uncategorized | Permalink | Comments (15)
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15 Comments

  1. I’ve been trying to download outside the cloud via amazon’s downloader and have not gotten anything but the booklet for the past 3.5 hrs.

  2. Hence why~ We love Music Stores. Let’s listen together and remember to Buy Indie Support Locals.
    A cloud service will work it just has to have the right karma behind it and a mulit_tenant DB #Justsayin

  3. I purchased 3 hours ago and only got one track and the digital booklet. No response to the email I sent customer support. Looks like Amazon cloud fails again. Is the cloud ready for primetime?

  4. At least Amazon is gonna make it right that whoever purchases today will get it for 99 cents even if they can’t download it today.

  5. Don’t you just wish you could go to Tower Records and walk out with the album in your hand a pop it in you car stereo and listen to it OH the old days….LOL……

  6. Great customer acquistion idea! However it appears that it was not evaluated for impact throughout the vertical structure of the business.
    This particular type of error seems to happen more with Internet companies because the factory (servers) are more opaque to management and there is probably a tendency to forget that scarcity has been translated into server bandwidth.
    Even Mr. Spacely would not commit to deliver an order of Spacely’s Sprockets without making sure that his company can make and deliver them on time 😉

  7. I had a similar problem the week of the big Google server disaster (the day before) with an Amazon Cloud purchase – customer Service had to reinit to get me the album I bought then. So I wasn’t surprised today to see the tracks only slowly appearing in my directory.

  8. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
    Sorry, i’m sure some people are upset but
    a) Lady gaga’s new album (hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha)
    b) mp3s as a medium for purchase (hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha)
    c) Lady gaga’s new album (hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha)
    For those of you who got less than all the tracks, just thank the Lord for small mercies…. seriously… thank Him.
    hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha (ad infinitum)

  9. I think you’re placing way too much importance on the value of the Amazon reviews. They’re not going to scare anyone off from buying the album. The congestion will eventually clear up, everyone will get their download for $0.99, no one will remember this happened in a week, and this will be no more than an interesting footnote in Gaga’s legacy. The world keeps turning.
    And as much as I love technology such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc., this whole ordeal and the reaction to it shows how twisted our culture has become when we feel instant gratification is a right and not a privilege.

  12. They’re not going to scare anyone off from buying the album. The congestion will eventually clear up, everyone will get their download for $0.99, no one will remember this happened in a week, and this will be no more than an interesting footnote in Gaga’s legacy.

  13. Everyone I know bought a copy yesterday for a buck. We all knew that Amazon would fix things quickly, and they did. Late last night I got all my tracks. The real question is how many copies she moved on day one. My guess is more than ten million.

  14. I agree with this. I would hope that someone who takes reviews from strangers into consideration when making purchases like this will also take the time to read what’s being said rather than just look at how many stars it received. If a negative review is based upon technical errors and not the content, then it should be disregarded.
    But your second paragraph is where I strongly agree. I can’t believe how many people are throwing online tantrums because they purchased a brand new album from the world’s hottest stars for only 99 cents and OMG it didn’t immediately appear on their computer!!!!!!
    Seriously? Did people really not expect that there would be a huge demand and likely some server issues with something this major? I’m not even a fan of Lady Gaga but a) it was only 99 cents and b) I wanted the 20 MB storage upgrade that I got for buying an album on Amazon. So not only are you dealing with millions of “little monsters” but you’re also dealing with people who just couldn’t pass up a good deal. There were bound to be problems.
    I don’t see this as any kind of failure, not even for Amazon’s cloud player. It’s a techie version of ‘supply and demand’. People need to just chill out. 😉

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