Eminem has them hopping

It was like looting in reverse -- all over America on Thursday retailers were anxiously watching each other to see who would get hot merchandise on their shelves first. In New York, managers at the Virgin Megastore got wind of a rumor that the new Eminem album “Encore” was on sale in other Manhattan shops, so they scrambled to put the year’s most eagerly awaited CD in their window too.

“New York went first, then Boston, then the rest of the country, it just snowballed,” said Kevin Milligan, a vice president of the 20-store Virgin retail chain.

The strange scramble is pop music retail, 21st century style, where competition and piracy have turned the release of major albums into something akin to a pinata party.

For months “Encore” had been scheduled to hit stores next Tuesday, the day of the week retailers traditionally rack up the new releases. The problem is that “Encore” hit the Internet days ago, and so Interscope Records, Eminem’s label, abruptly moved the official on-sale to today.

“For us, once somebody put it on the shelf, it was a no-brainer,” Milligan said. “We won’t be the first to break street-date, but we won’t be the third either.”

This is all becoming a familiar drill for the music industry and for Interscope in particular. The rapper’s 2002 album, “The Eminem Show,” was rushed into stores in a similar fashion, and in early 2003 the release of another hot Interscope commodity, the debut disc from rapper 50 Cent, became a surprise sprint to store aisles. To some cynical eyes, the label seems to be quite adept at using the “surprise” releases to enhance the “event” nature of an album’s debut.

Up next is U2, the rock franchise whose new album, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” is due in stores Nov. 23. It’s already made an appearance in the Internet’s peer-to-peer file-sharing bazaars. Plenty of the band’s fans are willing to wait, however. The disc, through advance orders, is already the No. 3 seller on Amazon.com and, as of now, Interscope does not plan to launch “Atomic Bomb” early.

There was no such relaxation for “Encore.” The rapper’s fans, most of them much younger than U2’s core followers, fall into a far more active music-swapping population. Interscope officials did not want to watch Eminem’s music pingpong through hard drives for another four days without the retail option in place.

“The Eminem Show” has sold more than 9 million copies in the U.S., and since that CD was released he also had a hit film in “8 Mile” and a collaborative CD with the group D12, his old rap crew. His new album features Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Nate Dogg and others. To further sway fans into buying it, the album is being released in different versions and with various packaging perks, including a bonus disc of new songs and a new cellphone ring tone.

Those incentives are part of the myriad ways the music industry is trying to redefine what constitutes an “album,” and also to win back the hearts -- and discretionary income -- of young consumers. November is the major rollout month for the music industry, and the holiday retail season is paramount to record labels still righting themselves after several years of decline and turmoil in the business.

“There was an uptick this year over last year,” Milligan said, “and things are a lot better than they were two years ago.”

Among the holiday gifts the industry is pushing are a cluster of new greatest-hits albums (Britney Spears, Toby Keith and Shania Twain hot sellers among them already), a holiday-music collection from Clay Aiken and new releases from Destiny’s Child, Gwen Stefani and Snoop Dogg. The latter rap veteran’s album, also from Interscope, has been moved up a week due to online file sharing and now arrives in stores Nov. 16.

At Tower Records in West Hollywood, Eminem’s fourth album went on sale Thursday about noon.

“We’re still putting the letters up on the marquee,” operations manager Sharon Vitro said at lunchtime. “It’s going to be huge for us. He crosses over so many demographic groups.”

New SoundScan figures will be released Wednesday. With a Monday cutoff for data, “Encore’s” sales over only its first three days in stores should catapult it to No. 1 on the national album chart. Retailers said Thursday that they were expecting a million copies over the weekend.

Fan interest has been further stoked by two new hit music videos, “Just Lose It” and “Mosh,” which will only enhance the rapper’s reputation as a firebrand. The first shows Eminem in clown mode -- he mocks other pop stars, most harshly Michael Jackson -- and the second, an intense attack on the Bush administration, is the most stridently political song in the rapper’s career.