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The Korean electronics giant is said to have paid $5m for the
giveaway alone.

JAY-Z'S SUMMER SURPRISE

Hip-Hop Superstar-Mogul's Ad During NBA Finals Reveals July Album, Megadeal With Samsung

Just when mid-summer was starting to look pretty sleepy, Jay-Z decided to wake everybody up.

With a splashy three-minute ad that aired on Game 5 of Sunday night’s NBA finals, the hip-hop megastar and mogul announced that he’d be dropping a new album, the modestly titled Magna Carta Holy Grail, in July. Judging by their cameos in the clip, his collaborators include Rick Rubin, Swizz Beats, Timbaland and ubiquitous MVP guest Pharrell Williams.

In case you were wondering, by the way, Roc Nation will release the album through IDJ.

Thanks to a pact with Samsung reportedly worth $20-30 million, the album will be given away free via a mobile app to the first 1 million Galaxy S III and IV and Note II users who grab it; the app, available from the Google Play Store, will apparently also include an “unprecedented look inside the album” via ancillary material. The Korean electronics giant is said to have paid $5 mil for the giveaway alone. The app will be made available on 6/24, with the album beamed free to users at 12:01am on 7/4, 72 hours prior to its official release. The app will be shareable between Galaxy users on Facebook, Twitter and Galaxy-based sharing feature S Beam.

Here are some things we’re wondering about: Outside of Google Play, what kind of impact will this massive giveaway have on retailers like Target, which infamously returned Frank Ocean product after the artist put Channel Orange on iTunes a week prior to its release date?

Informed sources confirm that discussions are ongoing with SoundScan over whether the 1 million free copies will indeed (per SoundScan policy) be included in the first-week sales numbers. While most observers say, at this point, that the giveaway won't count toward the sales total, talks are ongoing. (And remember: The giveaway is global, so it’s entirely unknown how many of those will even be relevant to the U.S.)

But that’s not all we’re mulling over. What about Apple and iTunes? It can scarcely be disputed that Samsung—thus far the only real challenger to Apple’s smart-phone hegemony and a comer in the tablet field as well—gets a big branding boost here, stealing a march on Cupertino in both hardware and online terms. What’s more, the July 4 drop date Jay-Z mentions in the ad is the Samsung giveaway date, not the date the album goes on sale. How many fans will show up at the iTunes Store on Independence Day expecting to find Magna Carta Holy Grail there? Will the album go into the iTunes system on Monday night, as is typical? And might Apple somehow retaliate by placing it somewhat less prominently on the iTunes Store than one might expect? We’ll be following all this stuff and keeping you posted.

Fun fact: Jay-Z previously joined forces with another phone maker, Nokia, for a promotion back in 2003. Back then, phones weren’t nearly as smart. But we were about the same.

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