If you’re old enough to have bought your first music in CD or tape, rather than digital, form, you might remember how important Mondays (in the UK) and Tuesdays (in the US) used to be for pop lovers.
Keith Caulfield, co-director of charts at Billboard, told NPR that that was because shipping new units to shops worked out better when it was done at the start of the week.
But Adrian Strain, who’s worked as head of communications for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry representing over 1,300 labels, said that gave way to “New Music Friday” years ago.
That seems to have held up.
Brat, Charlie XCX’s album of the summer, was released on 7 June, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department came out on 19 April and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter dropped on 29 March – all Fridays.
Why?
Digital releases simply don’t work the same way their physical counterparts did.
Strain told NPR that “In the digital world, you can’t make consumers wait”, explaining that a fan in the US isn’t going to wait for a few days after their online British friend has already had access to a new song.
Digital releases don’t have to allow for the lag time previous rollouts did, and the industry agreed to set Friday as the new standard release day in 2015.
Not only did that suit listeners more, but it was meant to halt piracy too.
The new date “should give less reason for those people who can’t get the new release legally to go to illegal sites,” Strain said at the time.
Beyoncé’s 2013 release likely affected that decision, as her surprise Friday morning drop of her self-titled visual album created what music critic Rawiya Kameir called an “inflection point“.
Is that all?
No ― TIME writes that Friday releases help create a celebratory feeling, and there’s the obvious fact that people have more time to stream (and buy) music over the weekend.
Vox wrote at the time of the industry’s global agreement to drop new music on Fridays that it ruined the already-miserable Tuesdays.
Co-founder of Amoeba Music in Hollywood, Marc Weinstein, said the change was a “logistical nightmare” for physical music stores like his in 2015.
“A lot of people would come in on a Tuesday, which normally wouldn’t be a busy day,” he said at the time.
Amoeba Music still seems to be going strong, however; the Creative Industries Council writes that UK vinyl sales are at their “highest in decades” despite Friday drops.