Amazon, Best Buy Sell Lady Gaga's Album at Deep Discount

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If you're excited about Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way but money is tight, Amazon has got your back. The digital retailer is selling the standard version of Gaga's long-awaited record for only 99 cents as an mp3 download. Even for Amazon, who routinely sell new releases for $3.99, this is an extremely deep discount.

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Amazon's motives for the sale are pretty transparent. They are using Gaga's album as a loss leader to promote their new Cloud Drive service and are clearly hoping to cut into the sales of the album on iTunes, where the standard edition is going for $11.99. (The iTunes store is also heavily promoting an expanded edition with bonus tracks and remixes for $15.99.)

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Amazon isn't the only major retailer using Born This Way as a loss leader. Best Buy is giving away free CDs and digital downloads of the album to customers who purchase particular models of cell phones in a special promotion. The big box chain is also selling the disc for $7.99.

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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