The Eminem Show is raising its curtain even sooner than expected. After being pushed up from June 4 to May 28 a week ago because of bootlegging, Eminem’s latest will now hit stores this Sunday, Interscope announced on Friday (May 24).
Although smaller record chains and mom-and-pop stores have for years been known to sell albums the weekend before their official Tuesday release, it is unusual for major chains to be urged to get involved in the practice and go against the industry retail standard.
“We found we were able to meet the demand and get The Eminem Show into the stores even earlier than expected,” Interscope marketing exec Steve Berman, who appears in skits on both The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show, said in a statement. “Our mandate as a company was to put the album in listeners’ hands the way Eminem intended them to get it, and to do it as quickly as possible to battle the problems we were having with illicit copying. We saw no reason to have fans waiting until Tuesday in this particular case.”
