So I blogged recently about getting Idol contestant David Cook’s 2006 self-produced album, Analog Heart, and how, as of this morning, it was the top selling MP3 album on Amazon.
But now, I’ve noticed a couple of things:
- There were some reports of it being pulled from Amazon briefly, and
- If you look at the album download page now, all sales rank information has been hidden as if it never was.
What do you want to bet that the Idol production team is somehow behind this? I’m sure a wide public perception that Cook is the front-runner—that, indeed, his victory is inevitable—could adversely affect voting patterns.
Update 2008-04-22 06:53—What?! As of now, you can’t buy (or sample!) the album at all, though the item page is still there. The buy and sample buttons have been removed from each individual track and the whole album, too. This I don’t get at all. I can understand removing the sales statistics, but not preventing it from being sold altogether.
First, if anything, that’s like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, and second, this clandestine behavior smacks of under-the-table dealing, which, historically speaking, will only come back and bite the masterminds in the ass.
Mark my words: this is a PR nightmare in the making.
Update 2008-04-22 07:39—There are mutterings about this on Usenet, some wondering if Cook released Analog Heart for digital distribution after the AI season started.
Like others on the forum, though, I’m inclined to believe that the album was available before the season started, as are the albums made by other contestants (Carly Smithson, Kristy Lee Cook and Brooke White among them*), but since DC has pulled ahead of the pack in recent weeks, there has been an upsurge of public interest in any available previous work, and the resultant sales spike took the AI production team by surprise.
* Whose albums, by the way, are still available for purchase, making the removal of Analog Heart seem kind of unfair, if it was done just because it’s the only one of them that’s gotten enough public interest to become a phenomenon in its own right. Like I said: P. R. Nightmare.
Update 2008-04-22 10:39—More at MJ’s Big Blog.
Update 2008-04-22 14:47—Charming. Now Analog Heart no longer comes up in a search on Amazon, and if you try to follow the link I provided above, you get a 404 error.
Update 2008-04-22 14:56—If you intended to buy the album legitimately but missed the opportunity before it was pulled, you can still buy it from Fuzz. I’d recommend getting it before the same thing happens there.
Update 2008-04-26 16:25—And, quelle surprise, it is no longer available from Fuzz, either. Hope you got the chance to buy it before it disappeared.
the emotional pumpkin » It’s official. said:
[...] am in the throes of a full-blown obsession with David Cook’s 2006 album, Analog Heart (no longer available, sadly, for purchase anywhere I’ve looked), an obsession the likes of which I haven’t [...]
April 26th, 2008 at 4:38 pm