Eminem's 'The Eminem Show' Release Date Moves To Sunday

NEW YORK (Top40 Charts) - In an unheard of move in the record industry, Eminem's forthcoming album, The Eminem Show, will now be available in stores on Sunday (May 26).

Traditionally, albums are released in the United States on a Tuesday. While small mom and pop shops have long let go of albums a few days before the release date, only in extremely unorthodox circumstances would major retail chains be expected to release an album, especially one from an artist of this caliber, on any other day of the week.

"We found we were able to meet the demand and get The Eminem Show into the stores even earlier than expected," said Steve Berman, head of sales and marketing for Interscope Geffen A&M, in a statement released Friday (May 24). "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."

This is the second release date change for The Eminem Show this week. The album was originally scheduled to hit stores June 4, but was moved up one week to Tuesday (May 28) due to rampant Internet piracy.