Houston rapper Lil Flip is selling his major
label double CD debut, A Living Legend, for $5.99. The LP, which hits
shelves 8/27 on Sucka Free/Columbia, is being sold for 2 weeks at a lower price
to thwart bootleggers and increase sales in the sluggish economy. "It’s
a sales gimmick," Sucka Free Records CEO Duane "Hump" Hobbs told
the Houston Chronicle. "We’re doing it to increase our sales in the first
few weeks. This is a marketing and numbers game. To win, you gotta have both."
Flip signed the major label deal after selling
almost 150,000 copies of The Leprechaun. "Everybody else’s double
is $10 or more," Flip told the Chronicle. "Bootleggers go out and
get that and sell copies. But when the album is just $5, why bootleg?"
"The economy for music is bad right now.
We’re hyping this album any way we can," Sucka Free Records CEO Duane "Hump"
Hobbs continued.
The music industry is trying to cope with the
first decline in music sales in over 10 years and come up with ways to combat
the popularity of file sharing sites like the defunct Audiogalaxy and Napster,
both of home were targeted and closed by the RIAA.