Last December, Beyoncé surprised the world by releasing her self-titled album with no prior announcement or promotion. All 14 tracks and 17 music videos were somehow recorded in secret with her team managing to keep their lips sealed about the high-profile project. When the album finally dropped, the world was perplexed on how she managed to keep it a secret and curious as to whether this sort of non-promotion could work for other artists.
Since then, many artists have mimicked her game-changing release, hoping they would see the same success. Harvard Business School was so baffled by Beyoncé's feat that they decided to devote a case study to it in which they examined "the business, logistics, and ramifications of the surprise release."
Billboard got a hold of a preview to the case study, aptly titled "Beyoncé." The 27-page report was written by Anita Elberse, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, and Stacie Smith, a former student of hers. They spoke with the people behind the album's secret release, including employees at Beyoncé's company Parkwood, Columbia Records, Apple, and Facebook.
The report revealed that in 2012, Beyoncé rented a house in the Hamptons to record the album. "Everyone would have dinner together every night and break off into different rooms and work on music," Parkwood's general manager Lee Anne Callahan-Longo told them.
Beyoncé multitasked during the recording process and went room to room working on multiple songs at once.
"She had five or six rooms going, each set up as a studio," Callahan-Longo continued. "and would go room to room and say things like, 'I think that song needs that person's input.' Normally you would not see songs have two or more producers, but it was really collaborative."
For example, "Drunk in Love" has six producers and nine writers listed on its credits.
The album was originally scheduled to drop in November, but because the final video wrapped so close to the release date of November 18, they pushed the release for close to a month later.
Beyoncé's team wasn't able to begin manufacturing physical albums until the record had been dropped online to avoid leaks. They had a 72-hour turnaround for the physical release.
"Once the album is out, the plan is to quickly print a black cover with 'Beyoncé' in pink font which we can just slip over the package," Jim Sabey, Parkwood's head of worldwide marketing, said.
The report also offered a glimpse into Beyoncé's personality in the office.
"[Beyonce] doesn't often sit in her office," Callahan-Longo told them. "She usually walks from one office to the other, speaking with the staff. She'll come to my office and talk to me, or she will sit in the back and give notes on projects we are working on."
The singer's main focus is her art, so she has limited patience for sitting through business meetings.
"She has got a really good sense of the business side, but she doesn't like to live there always," explained Callahan-Longo. "We often laugh about how an hour into a business meeting she will get up and will start walking around. I can see it then -- that I've lost her, and that I have satiated the amount of business that she wants to discuss that day. . . . Because at the end of the day she is an artist, and her passion for art drives her."
