Miley Cyrus made her new album for just $50,000 - and that explains a lot

Miley Cyrus released a surprise album, "Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz," moments after performing at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night.

The album, which was released on SoundCloud for free, is her first collection of new music since 2013's "Bangerz," which sold more than one million units.

There's a lot to talk about with "Dead Petz" - from the subject matter and the sound to the collaborators and the release strategy. One of the most interesting stories about the album comes from Joe Coscarelli of the New York Times, whose profile of Cyrus was published hours after the VMAs.

Coscarelli reports that Cyrus recorded the album for $50,000 (millions less than "Bangerz"), and her record label wasn't involved at all.

From the Times:

She said the album cost about $50,000 to make - "Bangerz" was "a couple million" - although RCA Records, her label, did not contribute to the budget this time around. "They had never heard the record until it was done," she said, and it won't count toward fulfilling her multi-album contract.

That lack of financial commitment helps explain how this album - a psychedelic 23-song collaboration with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne - saw the light of day in its current form. There are no clear radio hits or concessions to the mainstream on here. While "Bangerz" rode in on the wave of massive singles like "Wrecking Ball" and "We Can't Stop," this album got posted online around midnight and the lead single is a screechy, meandering ode to smoking weed called "Dooo It!"

"Dooo It!" is more-or-less representative of the album on the whole - a trippy, experimental mishmash of rock, pop, and hip hop that has an identifable Flaming Lips feel. You get a sense that this is Miley's "weird" album, and she knows it.

In the Times interview Cyrus says, "I literally can do whatever I want. It's insane."

A more accurate statement might have been, "I literally can do whatever I want, as long the record label doesn't spend a penny on it and this will be clearly designated as a side project."

Making the album on the cheap and keeping it out of the official RCA succession of Miley albums lowered the stakes in a way that empowered her to make something devoid of commercial ambitions. It's a win-win for everyone - Miley got to go nuts on her passion project without any pressure to move units, and her label still has her locked up for what will ostensibly be more mainsteam albums down the road.

The Times used the word "homemade" to describe the nature of the album. Others have pointed out that this is very much not "Bangerz":

"Dead Petz" is not meant for mass commercial consumption in the way the last album was, because Miley set up a scenario where it didn't have to be.