While Mariah Carey is one of the biggest selling artists of recent years, I can’t imagine this will work out well for her. Her label, Island Def Jam, is putting together a mini-magazine, co-produced by Elle magazine, that will go along with her CD, which not only features the lyrics from the songs, interviews, and pictures, but also ads from companies that have a relationship with Mariah. While I think the magazine idea itself is an acceptable idea, the ads are flat-out lame. Even if the ads were very relevant to me, I wouldn’t want them as part of my CD packaging. I agree with Lefsetz on this one, it’s bad enough that she won’t put in the effort to make better music, but now she’s going to shove products down her fans throats.  Shameless.

I don’t have a problem with the magazine idea as a whole, I think it could make the physical product worth buying. Of course, if an artist is truly connecting with their audience, anything that could go into this magazine would have been released online as it happened.