Gaga Wars recounted in WSJ

THE CENTER OF ATTENTION: The Gaga media blitz shows no signs of letting up, as the pop provocateur turns up on the cover of the new Rolling Stone following Rob Sheffield’s fawning four-star review, and gets featured treatment in the Wall Street Journal. In the latter piece, headlined “Welcome to the Lady Gaga Wars,” a three-person reporter team led by the reliable Ethan Smith recounts Amazon’s latest David vs. Goliath offensive against iTunes via the decision to offer Born This Way as a 99-cent Daily Deal on day of release Monday. Amazon’s strategy, they write, is to “Gain digital-sales marketshare and critical mass for Cloud Drive and Cloud Player,” while Apple opts to “Rely on iTunes features and simple user experience to maintain large marketshare lead.” Citing an industry source, Smith and his posse say the two stores combined for 250-350k downloads in the first 24 hours. (5/25a)