Thank God it’s Friday — new albums are out
U.S. joins world on a standard release day
No more New Music Tuesdays. Owl City, Tyrese and Veruca Salt have new albums this week, but they’ll come out on Friday, the new standard release day for albums worldwide.
Experts say the move to a standardized release day is more logical in a music industry increasingly driven by digital sales and streaming.
Until now, albums have been released Fridays in Australia, Mondays in the U.K. and Tues- days in the USA.
“These release dates and territorial constraints come from an old-fashioned mentality of physical albums being delivered to brick-and-mortar retailers,” says Keith Caulfield, Billboard’s co-director of charts. “That’s an outdated way of thinking of things when everything ’s so instantaneous.”
Now, U.S. customers won’t have to wait longer than those in other countries.
Cutting that wait time also could lessen the demand for pirated music.
“If an album leaked the Thursday or Friday before” a Tuesday U.S. release, says Universal Music Group Nashville senior vice president Tom Becci, “you could see the piracy ramp up dramat- ically over the weekend.”
The release day change also will require Billboard to shift its sales charts.
Now, Billboard will track albums and individual tracks on a Friday-to-Thursday sales week rather than the Tuesday- through-Monday cycle it has used since 1991. The final charts under the old system will publish this Thursday, and the charts that post on July 14 will cover an 11day period from June 29 through July 9. Radio airplay will continue to be monitored on a Monday-through-Sunday schedule.
Artists used to have almost a full week to promote an album globally. “They could appear in Australia, then fly to Asia or Europe, then head to the U.S. to maximize their visibility throughout the week,” Caulfield says. “If your album is coming out at the same time around the world, how do you route an artist to appear in different places at once? That’ll be a challenge for artists and labels used to a staggered release week.”