Twitter is keeping the hits coming with their Earlybird specials. Hot on the heals of a deal with Buy.com for Madden 11, a new deal today offers the number one album in the U.S. at a nice discount: Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs.
But what’s sort of odd about the deal is that it’s for the CD version of the album — you know, the compact disc, remember those? And the deal actually makes said CD cheaper than the MP3 version of the album. If you visit this site, you can get the CD for $7.99, while the MP3 download version of the album is $8.99. And the CD version comes with free shipping in the U.S., so it is actually cheaper.
As we’re hopefully all well aware, the CD business is dead. Sure, mega retailers like Best Buy are keeping them around somewhat, but iTunes and its digital music has been the dominant music retailer for some time now. So what gives here? Why did Merge Record (the label in charge of Arcade Fire) decide to discount only the CD version of the album by 50% from $14.98 to $7.99?
Who knows, maybe they’re nostalgic.
The Earlybird Madden deal was actually so popular that Buy.com sold out of the game in about an hour. They managed to get some more copies and sold out of those in another hour. Hopefully Merge Records had the CD presses working overtime to make sure they have enough discs.
Arcade Fire, meanwhile, seems to be quite the digital darlings these days. YouTube did a live broadcast of their NYC show last week.
