Barry at IPac blogs about the "leaked" Fiona Apple record. This will turn out to be one of the most brilliant and — possibly — unrepeatable marketing events in the music industry.
It’s entirely plausible that someone at Sony said, "this stuff is so out there, we will never make our money back if we spend our usual promotion budget on it." So they shelved it.
It’s even more plausible that by shelving it, they have earned more column inches and top of mind awareness — by not spending a single dime on promoting it. When and where it ultimately emerges, it will still probably not sell remotely as well as Tidal.
But it will be one of the highest returns on promo investment a major label will have made in a long time.