What Do Jay-Z and the NSA Have in Common? More Than You Think

If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that as part of a larger $20 million deal with Samsung, Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail album was made available to a million people with Samsung handheld devices.

Forget for the moment that this was a big FAIL for Samsung on a technical level (more on that here). What else did Jay-Z get out of this beside publicity and $5 for every one of those downloads?

Answer:  information.  LOTS of information.

Magna Carta Holy Grail was available through an app that the New York Times calls “an ugly piece of software.”  It continues.

It demands permissions, including reading the phone’s status and identity, which made some users, notably the rapper Killer Mike, suspicious: Does Jay-Z really need to log my calls? It also gathers “accounts,” the e-mail addresses and social-media user names connected to the phone. Those permissions are often part of a typical app package. This one got worse.

When installed, it demanded a working log in to Facebook or Twitter and permission to post on the account. “We would like fans to share the content through social networking sites,” a Jay-Z spokeswoman said by e-mail. (E-mail to Samsung Mobile’s customer service address for the app was returned as undeliverable throughout Wednesday.) But the app was more coercive.

In the days before the album’s release through Samsung, the app promised to display lyrics — with a catch. “Unlocking” the lyrics required a post on Facebook or Twitter. I used Twitter, where hitting the “Tweet” button brought up a canned message: “I just unlocked a new lyric ‘Crown’ in the JAY Z Magna Carta app. See them first. http://smsng.us/MCHG2 #MagnaCarta.” The message could be altered, but something had to be sent. No post, no lyrics — for every song. Users were forced to post again and again. And frankly, a lyric that is going to show up almost immediately on the Internet isn’t much of a bribe for spamming your friends.

This sucks, don’t you think?  Read on.