Amazon Loses $3.2 million on Two Days of 99 Cent Lady Gaga Sales

So they acquired a half millon customers for, ummm, $6.50 each.....<p>.... and they got a TON of press worth millions.<p>.... and the word of mouth has been staggering.<p>.... and they could do this every week for a year and still not lose as much money as was invested in the CueCate.<p>Move on peoples.... nothing to see here but common sense.

This move was more than mere advertising, it was direct user acquisition. A certain number of people who would not have otherwise had amazon cloud drive accounts now do, and they have music they want on it.<p>It's a frontrun on itunes cloud as much as anything.

They didn't "lose" $3.2 million, they paid $3.2 million to advertise their music and cloud service.

Awesome 'found money' for Gaga and her label. Everyone who just wanted the free storage increase, or maybe decided to take the whole album because it was cheaper than a track, sent $8 her way from Amazon. She should have put out a promotion paying people $2 to buy the album through amazon, presuming her cut is greater!<p>I like the symmetry with the recent livingsocial promo ($20 at amazon for $10, where LS just bought the $20 credits at full price), which effectively flowed VC money to amazon to leverage amazon's brand appeal to acquire users to livingsocial. Amazon has now taken that money and given it to Gaga. How do I get on this train?

Probably a carefully calculated loss and lot cheaper than getting this kind of exposure through advertising.

Is there any reason to believe that this promotion wasn't a partnership between Amazon and the record company? I'd expect Amazon to bare the majority of the discount, but would be surprised if they hadn't got some of the discount knocked off from the other end, as it was a great promotion for them as well.

For a company that deals in billions[0], this is more of an experiment to gear towards the future of media dissemination.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/some-sales-figures-from-amazon-sales-are-up-46/" rel="nofollow">http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/some-sales-figures-from-am...</a>

"Amazon will lose about $7.40, according to Billboard's calculation."<p>Yeah? Where the calculation? I just read this as; "We've made up some number".

That is some seriously cheap user acquisition for Cloud Player and Cloud Drive - both great services IMO. Well played Amazon.

great strategy to get new customers. they will gain more than they supposedly lost... this "loss" will be nothing more than a marketing expense.

These kind of stats bug me. Because someone buys something at .99 cents does in no way mean they would have bought it for the full price.

How much money did Apple lose?

We all lose when lady gaga sells music, or gives it away

I bought the album just to get the 20GB Cloud drive space free for a year. Definitely a great deal and I'm sure the product awareness from the promotion was cheaper and more effective than traditional ads.