News: Jewel to Sell <em>Perfectly Clear</em> Cheap to Benefit Hall of Fame

Via :

Jewel will be selling copies of her first country album, Perfectly Clear, for a minimum $1 donation to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. The 24-hour sale will be available at her official Web site www.jeweljk.com on Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving. A shipping and handling charge will be added, but all proceeds from the donation will benefit the museum’s All for the Hall fundraising campaign which was launched by Vince Gill in 2005. In explaining her desire to assist the museum, Jewel said,  “I have come full circle with my music.  It was country music that I grew up on, so to be embraced by the country music community this year has been a great feeling.” Museum director Kyle Young noted, “The proceeds that Jewel and her fans are generously donating will help to fund the storage and preservation of the museum’s unduplicated collection of country music artifacts and assist our staff’s efforts to make the collection available to the largest possible audience through exhibits, programs, books and recordings.”

Well, that’s one way to suck up.

In all seriousness, though, good for her. I’m still not convinced that Jewel’s outing into country music is much more than a crafty (and likely temporary) marketing shift, but showing appreciation for the genre’s heritage in this manner certainly merits some props.

I could also foresee this panning out to be a very smart marketing move for her. At $1, she’s practically giving the album away, which may not be a bad idea, as many country fans have apparently been reluctant to take the plunge at full price. It doesn’t look like Perfectly Clear is going to become a best-seller itself, but introducing fans to her work in this “no-risk” fashion early on could help establish a stronger base of support for future country efforts, assuming the donation is properly publicized.