Frak Yeah Social Media!

On Jan. 11, Facebook crashed, or at least according to Kanye West. Around midnight, West tweeted a screen shot of an error page suggesting the famed social network had exceeded it’s bandwidth following the release of “H.A.M.”

Rap veterans Kanye West and Jay-Z had released the first track off of their forthcoming album, Watch the Throne, on Facebook but to lukewarm reviews and even more lackluster buzz.

Kanye West x Jay-Z - HAM by uristocrat

Days before the release, West and Jay-Z announced on their Facebook fan pages that “H.A.M.” would be a midnight release via a page dedicated to their joint album.

And soon after, the blogosphere was pregnant with anticipation of the duet single from the rap titans.

Facebook users rushed the Root Music powered “BandPage” for the first taste of Watch the Throne and in the hours following the release, the album page had garnered over 32k fans and hundreds of comments. “H.A.M.” was all the digital hip-hop community could talk about in the small hours of Jan. 11 but the question still remains:

Why Facebook?

It appears as though the Roc camps are still experimenting with social media and digital distribution. West’s lauded “G.O.O.D. Friday” song series was released officially via his Wordpress powered site Kanyewest.com/goodfridays. In exchange for subscribing to his newsletter, a listener got to download each of the 14 tracks.

Jay-Z’s latest release was a feature on Roc Nation signee, Jay Electronica’s record, “Shiny Suit Theory.” It was released via file sharing websites and distributed on Twitter and popular rap blogs for free download.

When it came to recent LPs, both West and Jay utilized their official websites as the primary purveyor of album information and previews.

West screened his short film, “Runaway,” alongside a real-time stream of related tweets and a link to preorder, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on iTunes on his website. Jay conversely had a content rich, flash website, JayZHitsCollection.com, dedicated to his greatest hits album with links directing visitors to a Island Def Jam operated e-commerce site for purchases. In both sites, the integration of social media networks was cursory and limited to Facebook and Twitter.

Despite being home to over 600 million users, Facebook has never been the standard for music releases.  Typically, artists have opted for their official websites, popular blogs, music social networks MySpace and BandCamp, and even file sharing sites like zShare and Mediafire.

Presumably, Jay-Z and Kanye West were at a loss for a Watch the Throne landing page. Rather than host promotions on their individual websites—despite the glitz of JayZHitsCollection.com, Jay-Z.com is as basic as an artist page can get—the two opted for Facebook. Kanye West’s fan page boasts over 5 mil users and Jay-Z’s over 6 mil so reasonably; Facebook appeared to be their best option.

But was it worth it?

Hours after the release, the Watch The Throne fan page had 32k fans and a day later had only increased to 76k with only 96k listens of “H.A.M.” That’s a low conversion rate for artists with millions of Facebook fans. Of the small percentage of the Kanye West and Jay-Z fans that joined the Watch the Throne page, few saw the need to even listen to the track twice, suggesting “H.A.M” was a musical spoil.

Even more, when Kanye West tweeted the official artwork for the single, the image got more views (99k) than the single got listens. West’s following on Twitter is less than half that of Facebook.

West and Jay utilized BandPage, a Facebook app also used by Rihanna and Drake, to debut “H.A.M.” It required users to “like” the page in order to gain access to the full track. Users can share the song with their friends but the player cannot be embedded outside of Facebook—#fail. About 20 hours after the release, the full preview was even truncated to only 90 seconds, or Jay-Z’s verse—ironically, critics argue that Jay’s verse was the only redeeming quality of the single— and fans were encouraged to purchase the song for $1.29 on iTunes as opposed to the commonplace, $.99.

For “H.A.M.,” the promotion was much like the song production, lazy. Jay and West relied too heavily on their existing fame and reputation and chose to phone it in. Outside of Facebook, there was little mention of the record. Neither West nor Jay-Z tweeted links to the Facebook fan page or prompted fans to purchase the single. There is a small, almost unnoticeable mention on Kanye West’s MySpace page and a sad blog post on Jay-Z’s official site but no mentions on Jay-Z’s MySpace page or Kanye West’s official website. Other networks like Last.fm have yet to be embraced by the two despite having a 1.7 mil (Jay) and 2.3 mil (West) listeners registered.

And what does this mean for MySpace?

Another nail in the coffin. MySpace is a go-to source for many users when it comes to music discovery and is unmatched in its ability to easily provide tracks, tour and band information but it’s popularity as a social network has been waning. Super rappers Kanye West and Jay-Z trading MySpace for Facebook is just a sign of the times. The company reportedly just laid off almost half of its staff this week and the parent company; News Corp. announced that it is putting MySpace up for sale.

But Facebook hasn’t done much to pick up the slack. Brands, musicians included, are limited in how they can present their product and have little if any options for page design. Simply put, Facebook is too boring for bands and its fan page structure doesn’t allow for much engagement and pales in comparison to Twitter when it comes to facilitating conversation. See also: Nicki Minaj. Her Facebook fan page posts every few days get an average of 1.5k comments each, on Twitter, no matter the hour, Minaj receives several mentions each minute, or over 5k messages a day. But I digress.

The jury is still out as to whether “H.A.M.” will do well sales wise. Last year no No. 1 singles off of the Billboard R&B or Rap/Hip-Hop charts made it to the top 10 on the general Hot 100; so if the Roc boys plan on changing this with Watch the Throne, they’ll have to come harder than “H.A.M.” 

—@SincerelyJane