Jay-Z and Samsung: Not a businessman, a business, man

Jay-Z is a pretty brilliant businessman, or business, man. “We don’t have any rules, everyone’s trying to figure it out,” he says on the video announcing the Samsung deal, “the Internet is like the Wild West, the Wild, Wild West; we need to write the new rules.”

And his reported $5 million deal with Samsung is a sweet rule re-write for him. But what’s in it for Samsung?

“By aligning themselves with Jay-Z, possibly the coolest man on the planet, Samsung hopes to have some cool shrapnel land on them,” says Max Dawson, a media consultant with Frank N. Magid Associates.

Samsung will hand out a million copies of Jay Z’s new album “Magna Carta Holy Grail” to its users via ap — three days before the album drops.

And, we could see more of these exclusive content deals, between mobile phones and mega-stars. “Content could essentially be leveraged as a way to differentiate devices from each other,” says Philip Napoli, communications professor at Fordham School of Business.

Maybe we should call it the Jay-Z’ing of the mobile industry.