In the midst of the never-ending debate over digital downloading, it’s always refreshing to come upon an artist that just “gets it” and uses the social aspect of resources, like iTunes, toward their advantage. Take, for instance, 18 year old country singer Taylor Swift. Yes, that’s right, WOMM lessons from an 18 year old country singer, bare with me here…

Swift partnered with iTunes to create a countdown campaign for the release of her sophomore album, Fearless. Every week for a month before the release date, one new song would be available for download on iTunes. Each of these four tracks came with a vlog introduction that provided some background info about the song. When the entire album was available, on November 11^th, fans were able to use the “complete my album” option to purchase the album at a discounted price, depending on the number of songs they purchased during the countdown campaign.

According to one argument, making four of the albums thirteen singles available before the release would deter fans from going to stores and purchasing the album in its entirety. However we, here at MGH WOM, beg to disagree. Making her tracks available before the album released prevented the CD from being leaked and got her fans buzzing early. There were positive reviews on the iTunes store before the album was even released! So, what was the verdict?

Well, Fearless debuted at #1 in Billboard’s Top 200 album chart and within the first week 592,304 copies were sold in stores alone, making it the largest opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of music. An additional 129,046 copies were sold digitally, making it the biggest country digital album debut in the history of Nielsen’s Soundscan. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the campaign was a success.

Artists should also take note of some other great WOM-friendly features already integrated into iTunes. Here are our top three:

3. Genius Tool – When users select a track from their iTunes library, genius will recommend similar style songs that users can purchase on the iTunes. This tool can expose an artist’s music to a whole new potential audience.

2. iChat Collaboration – Anyone that uses “iChat” has the ability to set a song from their iTunes library as their away message. This way, the song is exposed to everyone on their friends and friends can preview the song, with the option to purchase on the spot via a link to the artists’ album page on iTunes.

1. Top Songs – A way for artists to listen to their consumers.  When deciding which tracks to release as singles, Swift looks to her own iTunes “Top Songs,” which measures the popularity of a song by the amount of purchases made. It’s no wonder every single that she’s released has been a top 40 hit on the Billboard hot 100…when you give your audience what they’re telling you they want, how can you go wrong? Every (smart) artist should be using iTunes for this purpose and every (smart) company should be looking for their own “iTunes Top Songs.”