The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a group representing the interests of 1,300 record companies around the globe, announced Feb. 26 that Friday is now the universal release date for all songs and albums. According to IFPI chief executive officer Frances Moore, the move has two purposes: to allow consumers easier access to music across national borders and to reignite the excitement of new music being released.
There’s nothing inherently controversial about the decision made by an industry known for desperate attempts to hold onto their sales; they’ve simply moved the time artists release their music to a specific part of the week. However, the practicality of such a change is highly dubious.
Moore claims, “The global release day narrows the gap on piracy by making it less likely that consumers will go to pirate sites when they can’t get new releases in their country." If there’s any industry that needs to lift national boundary restrictions, the last one I had in mind was the music industry. Pirating music is still a low-risk crime, and because of that, there will be pirates and leakers regardless of where artists release their music.
That being said, a universal release date could prevent internet forum frenzies, where a link to a .zip file of a hot new album is posted and consumed in seconds globally. Forums such as 4chan’s /mu/ have no regional boundaries, so it’s easy to bypass the release date of your country for quick’n’dirty downloads from one of these sites.
Then there’s the ever-more popular streaming services like Spotify, where spending a day plowing through release after release will amount to approximately 0.3 cents in revenue for artists. If an album I was anticipating dropped on its own, I would be able to at least throw a couple more cents at the band by playing their album over and over. With a universal Friday drop date, consumers will only be able to give an album half a thought before it’s on to the next big release.
Moore’s second point is where one can truly begin to see the irrelevance of the date. “By creating a single day for new releases across the world, it’s an opportunity to re-awaken the excitement and anticipation of new music everywhere,” Moore writes in her statement. The point is a fancy way of saying that consumers are more prone to buy music if everyone else is buying it at the same time.
Personally, during my weekends, I’m more focused on hanging with friends and playing reliable hits at parties than having to dissect a brand new album to make sure it’s weekend-compatible. Weekday releases are wonderful in that they can make study and work-filled schedules slightly more tolerable through offering new art to ponder as nine-to-fivers are unwinding from their shifts.
Also, how can individual artists be “celebrated and anticipated” when their high-profile releases are being drowned out by a wave of other albums? Nobody’s going to remember the day they first heard Jay Z’s new album because it’s the same day they first heard Vampire Weekend’s and DIIV’s and Wilco’s new album. The whole experience becomes muddied when listeners have to wade through releases instead of enjoying each one individually.
We’ve also reached a massive revolution in musical releases as of late with the invention of the surprise release. In fact, albums being released on the fly are getting more attention than those with set release dates. I’ll still remember opening my laptop to the flood of updates that came from my Facebook group message about Death Grips’ third album, Government Plates, being dropped out of nowhere during my high school World History class. It made an absolutely unbearable lecture on Chinese government structure into a hunt for all information and opinions I could find on the album. And while I currently am unable to explain any aspect of the Chinese feudal system, I can at least reminisce about the whimsical nature of MC Ride’s screaming homeless man lyrics, making a surprise visit on an otherwise dull Wednesday.
Staggered releases also allow me to reach more albums at once. If every release I was looking forward to came out all at once Friday, I now have to go through an entire list of albums to the point where it feels like I’m taking notes as opposed to being engrossed in each individual album. A Friday release date could spell out “back-cataloging” for consumers, where albums might never get listened to because listeners are already up to their necks in other releases.
Moore starts her explanation of the date change with the claim that “Music fans live in the digital world of today.” She’s right, music has evolved into a completely different beast with the invention of the internet. But the world she speaks of is still separate from the delusional world most record companies operate in, where they assume consumers appreciate a copyright-laden art form and torrent albums because they want to steal, not because it’s bar none the easiest way to deliver, and subsequently listen, to music. There really is no clear answer how the music industry will pull itself out of this slump, but this global release day is the equivalent of throwing an ice cube in a house fire.
