Celebrity Look up!

Britney Spears' life, by all appearances, is off track; her album, however, is on the fast track.

Blackout, Spears' latest album, will be released two weeks ahead of schedule, on Oct. 30, Jive Records said Wednesday.

The label portrayed the move as a bid to thwart pirating, which it said was responsible for "unfinished material" and "demos" hitting the Internet, and being passed off as "legitimate songs."

"Due to these numerous unauthorized online leaks," a Jive statement said, "the label is doing everything possible to prevent and avoid any further illegal distribution of songs."

Step one, according to the label, is to put the album on sale before Halloween and not on Nov. 13, as originally announced just last week.

Left unsaid were the fringe benefits of a release date that avoids pitting Spears and her first album of new material in four years against the likes of Celine Dion, Ja Rule and "Rehab" singer Amy Winehouse, who has had her own tabloid issues. All three music stars, and more, have collections due out Nov. 13.

On Oct. 30, Blackout will face off against a smaller field of contenders, led by the downsized Backstreet Boys, who, along with Spears and 'N Sync, ruled the charts in the late 1990s.

Left unanswered was how much, if any, promotion Spears, of late shuttling in and out of court on custody and criminal matters, was going to do for the speeded-up Blackout. Spears, 25, is due to go before a Los Angeles judge on Oct. 25, six days before the album release, for a hearing on her hit-and-run case. Jive did not respond to email requests seeking comment on its promotional plans.

To music-marketing expert Bob Baker, the Spears album will be a challenge for the label.

"How do you market a train wreck?" asked Baker, author of the Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook.

Billboard Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for the music-industry magazine, is less concerned about Spears' availability or willingness to hit the promotional road.

"Tupac once debuted on top of the Billboard 200 while he was in jail," Mayfield said. "People come to the stores whether the artist is promoting [an album] or not."

To Mayfield, Jive's repositioning of Blackout to Oct. 30 is not a dramatic move so much as a tweak to the always-crowded year-end calendar. To Baker, it's "another pathetic ploy by the traditional music industry."

According to Baker, the problem is of Jive's own making. "To me," Baker said, "it seems like another pathetic ploy by the traditional music industry. It shows their desperation—in the same way she was rushed into the VMAs."

In Spears' lone personal appearance on behalf of her new album to date, the singer sleepwalked her way through MTV's Video Music Awards. The Sept. 9 appearance drew ridicule, but it also successfully launched her new single, "Gimme More," currently the most downloaded song on iTunes and the number three song on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. The music video, featuring a more animated Spears, likewise is among the most-watched music clips on YouTube.

Jive has not detailed Blackout's tracks beyond "Gimme More." Billboard has reported that the album will feature the songs "Heaven on Earth," "Piece of Me," "Break the Ice" and "Radar," one of the leaked cuts.

Spears' last album of new songs was 2003's In the Zone, released before her two pregnancies, her second broken marriage, her shaved head, her rehab stints and the tell-all tales of alleged drug abuse from an ex-bodyguard.

"If she can somehow turn this into a story of salvation [and] redemption, and go on newscasts being honest about what she's learned...there's a chance for her to put a positive [spin] on this," Baker said of the singer's Blackout phase.

And Spears can do all this by Oct. 30?

"Yeah," Baker deadpanned, "turn your life around in two weeks."