Lady Gaga Says Born This Way Is 'Absolutely' Not Worth More Than 99 Cents

'I applaud a company like Amazon for equating the value of digital versus the physical copy,' Gaga tells The Wall Street Journal.
By James Montgomery


Lady Gaga
Photo: Getty Images

Ever since Lady Gaga's Born This Way was released on May 23, much has been made of its pricing and promotion, a multi-tiered plan that included partnerships with everyone from the folks behind "FarmVille" to Best Buy ... and, of course, Amazon.com, which decided to price the album at 99 cents on the day of release to promote its Cloud Drive service (and when the download demand subsequently sank the site, they extended the deal for a second day).

According to some estimates, downloads through Amazon accounted for nearly half of Born This Way's 1.1 million sales — which certainly proved that it worked — but at the same time, it also sparked genuine debate about the inherent worth of an album ... and whether the Amazon model may have fundamentally changed the way new releases are promoted and priced.

So, in a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, Gaga was asked whether she believed that Born This Way was worth more than 99 cents. And her answer was somewhat surprising.

"No. I absolutely do not, especially for MP3s and digital music. It's invisible. It's in space. If anything, I applaud a company like Amazon for equating the value of digital versus the physical copy, and giving the opportunity to everyone to buy music," she said. "It also wasn't really 99 cents, because Amazon paid the difference on all of those purchases as part of their promotional campaign for one of their new services. I think it's amazing and it was a really nice surprise and I felt honored that they chose my record to be part of it."

Amazon would be paying the difference on all those 99-cent purchases to Interscope/ Universal Music Group — a tab that could run as high $3.2 million, according to Billboard.biz — but in the long run, that loss might actually be viewed as a win, since it drove traffic to the site and raised awareness of its fledgling Cloud Drive service. And Gaga is the first to admit that the plan isn't for everyone ... it's up to individual artists (and their labels) to determine a price point. But she's happy with the results this time out.

"I don't know if other artists or other companies would want to adopt the same model," she told the WSJ. "Everyone always has the opportunity to sell their music at any price they want to. This sort of happened this way and it's very exciting."

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Emma Stone And Bryce Dallas Howard Bond Over 'Spider-Man' Role

New Gwen Stacy says 'it was pretty great to be together' on 'The Help' set when she learned the casting news.
By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Josh Horowitz


Emma Stone
Photo: MTV News

WEST HOLLYWOOD, California — In a weird twist of fate, Emma Stone found out she'd be playing Gwen Stacy in the latest installment of "Spider-Man" while on the set of "The Help" co-starring the previous franchise's Gwen, Bryce Dallas Howard.

"I found out while I was on set of 'The Help,' " she said about the Andrew Garfield-starring "Amazing Spider-Man" during "The Help" Q&A session for MTV's Sneak Peek Week. "It was pretty great to be together for that."

Howard said she was almost as excited about the casting as Stone was. "Representing as redheads!" she proclaimed onstage in front of an excited crowd at the Pacific Design Center. "I'm one of those people that goes online and reads gossip about movies, so pretty early on, there was some buzz," she said, adding that she stormed into Stone's trailer the minute she heard the news. "I was stoked."

With so much buzz about the new "Spider-Man" film, it seems that Stone will be just as surprised as fans to see the flick.

"I've seen nothing, I promise. I've seen small action sequences for the 3-D, and it looked terrible," she joked. "I really haven't seen [anything]."

So what did Stone do to research the role of Gwen — besides leaning on Howard for her first-hand account, of course.

"I read a pretty comprehensive 'Death of the Stacys' book ... and it's a really amazing book to learn the story of Captain Stacy and Gwen Stacy," she said. "And I've read a various amount of comics."

Will wizards, vampires or dream thieves steal the 2011 MTV Movie Awards? Find out June 5, when the 20th annual show airs live at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Tune in at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT that night for the "America's Best Dance Crew" finale and Movie Awards pre-show, loaded with live action from the red carpet, exclusive movie clips and a special edition of "After Hours." To get into the magical movie mood, it's Sneak Peek Week -- five days of exclusives and interviews with the casts of "Fright Night," "Horrible Bosses" and more. Check out everything there is to know about Sneak Peek Week, the Movie Awards and the pre-show at MovieAwards.MTV.com!

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