Waiting Sucks: The Best Way to Release an Album Is to Drop it Overnight

On December 12 2013, Beyoncé rocked up out of nowhere and dropped a massive album without so much as a hint that something was on the way. It changed the game.

The record was never meant to happen the way it did, but during extensive touring throughout 2013, the nature of the project changed and it’s visual aspect became increasingly important. Beyoncé began to favor an unexpected release and eventually dropped the entire album all at once as a series of individual videos. Naturally, it was met with total hysteria, because Beyoncé. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, sold 828,773 copies worldwide in three days, becoming the fastest-selling album in iTunes Store's history.

Fast forward a bit, and this year has seen a whole wave of artists from U2 to Wiley unleashing their albums out of nowhere. And it’s not like we’re talking casual or smaller releases here; this isn’t Michael Cera uploading an album to Bandcamp that sounds like he’s learning to play every instrument at once—these are fully-fledged records with big money backing and the same lengthy creative processes as Taylor Swift's1989 (which was plugged months in advance).

So, what does this tell us about the industry? In a climate where branding and social media are considered essential tools to success, can artists really afford to just bypass them entirely?

Evidently, the standard business model of prolonged promotional campaign followed by a single and then another single and then a full release and then more singles, is getting tired. When we have access to any artist from any era at our fingertips, it is becoming increasingly hard for an artist to stand out. So, from an artist’s perspective, dropping an entire album unexpectedly is an attempt at going viral instantly, and regaining control of the way their material is marketed.

Similarly, we live in a consumer age defined by its increasingly fleeting attention span. We get hyped on something instantly, make sure everyone is aware of how hyped we are about the thing, and then forget about it entirely in a few days when there’s a new thing to get hyped on. When so much information gets lost—overtaken and pushed down the Twitter feed—perhaps the "slow reveal” no longer leads to a bigger pay off. Artists have to find new, innovative ways to engage with people.

One way to not do it is to sneakily plant your album onto every Apple device in the world, like some sort of trojan virus. Well intentioned as it was, U2 “gifting” Songs Of Innocence to 500 million iTunes customers for free was creepy at best and a complete personal violation at worst. Still, the surprise album shifted 28,000 units in its first week—95 percent of which were generated from physical sales—and went on to rank in the Top 40 best-selling albums of all time. Somewhat less intrusively, Thom Yorke’s release via everyone’s favourite record label “BitTorrent” hit one million sales in the first six days. And Skrillex’s Recess, originally delivered via App, debuted at #1 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart. The instant drop already has its successful case studies.

Nobody is arguing the effects of good marketing, though. Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories didn’t become Amazon’s best-selling vinyl OF ALL TIME by accident, it was given a planet-sized helping hand by “the most tactical and innovative marketing campaigns in music business history.” But, as Beyoncé, U2, Thom Yorke and Skrillex have all shown, spending months and months gradually familiarizing people with a forthcoming project isn’t the be all and end all of releasing an album. And although each of those artists dropped their albums in different ways under different circumstances, the reasoning behind it was the same. They all became disillusioned by the current model of accessing music and the depleting relationship between artist and fan.

For slightly smaller artists like Wiley, Azealia Banks, and Angel Haze, instantly dropping their records was less of a unique marketing experiment and more about cutting ties with major labels who weren't representing their interests. They weren’t trying to take a new, innovative route to the consumer, they just wanted to put their fucking album out, and this method has become symptomatic of how many artists we have seen break-up with their major labels over the last 12 months. The whole routine of pre-release marketing and PR is so rigorous and inflexible that it can be incredibly frustrating, particularly when you are competing with even bigger artists for your label’s attention. In a video explaining why she undercut Island Records and leaked Dirty Gold herself, Angel Haze pointed out how important marketability can be in terms of building a platform that you can use to do your own thing, but ultimately, if it gets in the way of you doing what you want to do, then it’s not worth it.

Still, in all instances the decision to “drop” is inherently about reclaiming a sense of control over a body of work in tumultuous creative and consumer climates. Obviously, the benefit of being on a major is that they have a lot of money to funnel into promoting a release to make sure it does as well as it possibly can (so they can make their money back, duh). In Beyoncé’s case, that financial backing went instead to the production of the album and its corresponding videos. Naturally, her team thought she was crazy for even suggesting it (also, let’s be honest, who wants to work on 14 VIDEOS at once), but ultimately it was a risk everyone could afford to take. This is Beyoncé.

That said, even Queen Bey said that she feels a disconnect between herself and her fans because of the nature of how we experience music these days. She said she would prefer her album to come out “when it’s ready, and from me to my fans,” presumably as opposed to whenever the label decides the deadline should be and via months of advance promotional advertizing. If you think of it like a Christmas present from someone you love, it’s the difference between them telling you exactly what they’re going to get you in July, and making you wait half a year to have it, or bestowing you with an unexpected surprise. Then, of course, there’s the odd seasonal postal service fuck up and nobody gets the thing they ordered for Christmas at all and it shows up something like two years later—you feel me, Azealia?

Point being, it is the year 2014 and there is more than one way to release an album, and that can range from the good old fashioned “promote and release” to something more innovative, like creating its own Tinder profile and only giving download codes to people who match. Among all this, the sudden album drop might look impulsive, but for many artists it is becoming the most relevant possible route.

Follow Emma on Twitter: @emmaggarland