In an effort to bump up the first-week SoundScans of its forthcoming country crossover album Lost Highway, Bon Jovi is bundling free copies of its forthcoming album, Lost Highway, with tickets to its “open-ended” run of shows at a new venue in Newark, N.J.:
The online presale program will be available exclusively to American Express cardholders beginning June 12 through June 14, and to the general public from June 15 through June 22. Tickets without the digital album download will then be available for purchase by the general public beginning June 23.
Fans who purchase the Lost Highway Ticket Package will receive a code from Ticketmaster that enables them to download Lost Highway from iTunes beginning on its June 19 release. The ticket/album package will be priced at $9.99 higher — the price of the album on iTunes — than those later sold outside the package. Album sales in the bundle will count toward SoundScan and the album’s Billboard chart position.
The shows are in October, which means that Richie Sambora will have plenty of time to get clean (and relearn the words to “Wanted Dead Or Alive”) . We’re guessing also that the option of buying tickets for multiple nights out of the question–although the option to do so would certainly bump up the SoundScans, given that these shows are in Bon Jovi’s ground zero of New Jersey and the run is “open-ended.” (Although if word gets out that this show’s setlist will only include songs from Lost Highway and This Left Feels Right, the strategy could backfire.)
Bon Jovi To Bundle Digital Album, Presale Tickets [Billboard.biz]
is the Jovi purposely trying to alienate the attention deficit demographic?
I try to get pissed about this kind of cheaty manipulation bullshit, but then I realize that I don’t give two shits about who knocks Daughtry or Maroon 5 or R Kelly out of the top spot.