Lady Gaga is no stranger to direct-to-fan music releases.
Now her manager has said that, if it were up to him, he’d give her next album away totally free – with the focus on getting it as much exposure as possible:
“If it was up to me, I’d give away the next album and put it on every handset that I can put it on, to get that scale,” he said. “You can’t be scared to fail. Sometimes we’re going to get big results, and sometimes you learn a lesson, make an adjustment and move on.”
In an era when so many top musicians are being pressured to toe the industry line about how evil “free” is and the dangers of piracy”, it’s even more powerful to see one of the biggest (if not the biggest) pop stars in the world, and her management, recognizing publicly that the business model these days isn’t about selling music directly.