Bruce Springsteen has a new album coming out March 6, and the way it’s being marketed is really smart.

Starting February 20 and continuing through March 2, 10 of the album’s 11 songs will be streaming daily, one song per day, on partner sites like Rolling Stone, Spin and Paste. The 11th song and the opening track, “We Take Care of Our Own,” was released January 19.

For a complete rundown of sites and links–and more Springsteen news than you can handle–check out Backstreets. The sites and links rundown, including which song is streaming on which day, is in the February 20 post.

It’s a smart strategy for a number of reasons, mainly because it’s tapping into the online audiences of 10 major music sites. Sure, the entire album is being offered essentially for free, but to get it all you have to be pretty tech-savvy in order to capture the streams. (Plus it would be a lot easier to just tap into the leak of the album that happened earlier this week.)

Meanwhile, awareness and word of mouth is growing significantly on a record that is, from what I’ve heard so far, is as powerful and thematically cohesive a set of songs, both lyrically and musically, as anything he’s ever done.

So yeah, Springsteen’s giving away the whole deal. So what? My prediction is that Wrecking Ball will get a ton of five-star reviews and will be one of the top-sellers of 2012, in no small part because of this marketing strategy.

Bruuuuuuuuce!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Springsteen.