Imagine being a birthday party planner for one of your best friends. However, instead of buying crepe paper, balloons and a cake, you have to spend months planning and thinking about this party. This party costs thousands of dollars to pull off.
You’ve worked with dozens of people to pull this event off. Now, imagine somebody tells your best friend about the surprise party. Everything you’ve worked for is null and void.
This immense disappointment and aggravation is exactly what musicians feel when their much-anticipated albums are leaked or released early. In a trend that has become more and more prevalent in recent weeks, major label albums by some of music’s most popular artists are dropping like flies into our Spotify accounts and iTunes preorders.
With this rash of early releases spreading quickly, it seems important to question the importance and relevance of scheduled release dates. Currently, the majority of albums are released on Tuesday, allowing music publications to get a listen early in the week and issue a timely review.
One of the most recent victims of premature releases is Kendrick Lamar, whose third album, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” was digitally distributed a week ahead of schedule due to a mistake by Interscope Records.
Earl Sweatshirt, of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, also experienced some anguish about the sudden announcement of his second album “I Don’t Like S—, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt.” According to Sweatshirt’s Twitter, his label, Columbia Records, and its parent corporation, Sony Music Entertainment, are to blame for the spontaneous issuing of “Go Outside.”
In hopes of remedying the confusion of various international release dates, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry decided in February to establish a “Global Record Release Day.” This ruling declared that, starting this summer, all albums would be released on Fridays, allowing music fans worldwide to enjoy their favorite artists at the same time.
This news, combined with the continuous issues surrounding planned releases, begs the questions: Does any of it matter? Are release dates relevant to today’s listeners? More and more websites such as Pitchfork and NPR Music are gaining early access to music’s biggest names,
allowing fans to hear albums without ever having to pay. In the case of today’s early access, the concept of paying for music has become the long-dreaded option.
Fortunately, the possibility of streaming an album usually only applies to artists who are so successful, they are hardly affected by the money lost to Spotify.
If this trend of disregard for artists’ wishes continues, the concept of planned releases will go the way of the dodo. Musicians, especially the strong-willed ones like Sweatshirt and Lamar, will be forced to take matters into their own hands, releasing albums as they see fit.
Musicians calling the shots would probably result in a better world for listeners. An album released without any prior advertisement can be a culturally significant event. In the case of Beyoncé’s unannounced self-titled fifth album in 2013, fans lauded the album, its videos and the resulting mania as an artistic move for the ages.
Since the surprise release of “Beyoncé,” many labels have been looking to capitalize on the effect of Beyoncé’s independence and control over her own material.
This independence could result in artists releasing albums that are either underdeveloped and released due to impatience or albums that hold an extended hiatus because of the need to perfect every last detail, which is a cursory effort.
The solution to this tense environment between artists, labels and fans lies in the direction of label decisions. Whether it is in artists’ contracts or in the leniency of a company’s legal handling of an artist’s wishes, choices should always be made with the artistic well-being of a talent rather than the well-being of a label’s pocket.
Every friend deserves a good birthday party and every party planner deserves to have their secret kept until it’s time to yell “Surprise!”
Gerald Ducote is a 20-year-old communication disorders senior from Hamburg, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @geraldducoteTDR.