Tyler, The Creator is making a bold bet for his new album. Contrary to the practices of the music market, the American rapper decided to present his new album chromacopy this Monday, October 28, instead of Friday, the usual day for music releases.
With this gesture, Tyler, The Creator aims to change the music industry and encourage artists to free themselves from the traditional approach to album releases, based today mainly on sales figures – recorded by Billboard from Friday to Thursday in the United States.
“Passive listening” on weekends
In 2023, Tyler, The Creator has already explained that he “no longer believes” in the effectiveness of Friday releases, believing that listeners have more time to immerse themselves in the world of an album during the week. “I think we should start releasing music again during the week instead of on Fridays,” he confided to Canadian journalist Nardwuar.
“People think that on the weekend they will have time to listen to music. But I think it’s a lot of passive listening, at parties or when people go to the gym. “People want to relax on the weekend, so they don’t really listen. “says Tyler, The Creator.
“Whereas if you release your music during the week, people will listen to it on their way to work or school, when they really have time to dig into it and listen to an album,” he specifies.
He added: “Working on an album for so long and putting so much energy into it for it to come out on Friday at midnight seems disrespectful to me. I think it would make more sense if it came out in the morning.” .
Releases originally scheduled for Tuesday in the US.
Before 2015, each country had its own music album release day. In the United States, albums were released on Tuesdays, while in France album releases were on Mondays, on Wednesdays in Japan and Australia, and on Fridays in Germany.
But in February 2015, with the arrival of streaming, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (FIIP), which represents 1,300 international labels, decided to harmonize releases internationally to make it easier for the media to promote artists. , but also to prevent piracy of albums before their release.
After significant debate, many industry players (labels, distributors, platforms, etc.) agreed on a new common release day: Friday at 00:01 local time in each country. Because, according to several studies carried out at the time, people preferred to buy their music, in physical or downloadable format, on Friday so they could enjoy it on the weekend.
Releasing a record on Friday also allowed artists to maximize their place on the top charts, as Billboard’s ranking is established each week taking into account sales from the Friday to the following Thursday.
Since then, although this measure is by no means mandatory, artists from all over the world have agreed to follow the movement, mainly for commercial reasons.
Criticized by many artists.
But, like Tyler, The Creator, many artists in the past have attempted to differentiate themselves from the music market’s release habits by releasing their music on a different day than the established one.
In 2013, Beyoncé unexpectedly released her album. Beyonce on a Friday (instead of Tuesday), which did not prevent the album from selling more than 430,000 copies in just over 24 hours in the United States. However, if the singer could afford to take this risk it is mainly because her teams knew that her popularity could compensate for a possible gap in her sales figures.
For an emerging artist, releasing an album on a day other than Friday can allow you to stand out from the crowd by avoiding the congestion of releases at the end of the week, but above all it can be very risky in terms of sales.
In the case of Tyler, The Creator, however, this approach is not likely to have a negative influence on sales of chromacopy, judging by the success of their first single noidlistened to more than 9 million times on YouTube in one week.
But the rapper’s bold approach will have at least had the merit of relaunching the debate on the relevance of Friday releases and may ultimately succeed in orienting the music market towards a less frenetic mode of consumption.
Source: BFM TV
