After the VMAs, there were lots of post-mortems in my team about what went wrong with Britney and conversations with her label about the upcoming album rollout. We were told that Britney wouldn’t be available to make any appearances or do any interviews, which was unheard of at the time. They were launching her album without her, while she took time to “get better.” Think about that for a minute: the wheels of commerce couldn’t stop until she was able to promote the album. The company releasing it felt they didn’t need her to promote her album. The Britney Spears brand was bigger than the actual Britney Spears. It’s not an accident the album was released on 30th October 2007, either — that date was selected to maximise fourth quarter (and holiday) profits. If her label had held the album, they would not have made that money in the year, and it might have caused their stock to go down. Yes, the music industry is now, was then, and always has been just that crass.