Dear African artist, you don't have to release music on Friday
With the advent of streaming and its oft-derided offspring - playlisting, it has become more imperative to release music on Fridays because streaming platforms update their playlists on Fridays.
A few months before the end of the year in 2019, Nigerian Journalist and Strategy Lead at MAVIN Records, Segun Akande complained about how music Friday releases give him anxiety. In his words, “I don’t pay attention to music Friday anymore, I just want to play music whenever I can - it’s an excessive amount of releases every Friday.”
On Friday, July 10, 2020, veteran Nigerian rapper, Label Executive and music lover, Gilbert ‘A-Q’ Bani jokingly complained about the excessive amount of releases. He joked that he was going to sleep because he couldn’t keep up. A few months ago, Nigerian rapper, Meji asked Motolani Alake and Excel Joab if it was advisable to release music on Friday, we answered him no.
How did we get here?
In the only days, there was no appropriate day to release music. Release dates were mostly strategic to make sure that an artist gets all the attention their music can get from their audience. Artists and labels would try to stand out by making sure other major artists are avoided that week.
Some labels and artists would release music on Fridays because of the idea that people are more likely to consume more music over the weekends, when they are at home.
In the US, the idea was also slightly influenced by the Billboard Charts that tracks releases from Friday to Thursday. Releasing music on Friday gives your fans longer time of consumption and gives the artist great charting prospects. In the old days, US labels would release music in Tuesdays and in Canada, Wednesdays.
Get more perspective below;
In an article for Hype Bot, Bobby Owsinski also notes that, “Different territories used different release days and that made pirating easier. For instance, if a territory released new music from a major artist on Monday, it could be up on a pirate site in the old download days before the official release elsewhere on Tuesday or Friday, thereby hurting sales. A uniform Friday release day eliminated that, although that reason doesn’t matter much with streaming these days anyway.”
In 90’s and 2000s Nigeria, we didn’t really have an acceptable day for music releases. People would literally release music on Sundays and Mondays, depending on what their marketer says. It was a time of heavy consumption by physical copies anyway. Piracy was also pretty prevalent in Nigeria.
By 2013 after Beyonce released her self-titled album, Nigeria joined its faith with foreign countries across the globe and Friday releases became a thing. With the advent of streaming and its oft-derided offspring - playlisting, it has become more imperative to release music on Fridays because streaming platforms update their playlists on Fridays.
As you know, playlist inclusion = a happy modern day artist. But in all these, people have not stopped to understand the saturation that obsession with Friday releases birth. If anything, it fosters anxiety, short attention spans and fear of missing out. Quality music from talented, unpopular acts also gets lost on the melee. Even when the quality music gets touched, people don’t live with it as they should before they move.
It’s just like the old idea by the Spanish Football Federation to only show La Liga matches later in the evenings because they felt people were likely to be at home at 10 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. While that made a lot of sense, people also want to sleep at 10 pm.
This made them lose a lot of ground to the English Premier League that showed games during the day on weekends. Financially, the Premier League blossomed because marketing-wise, they would guarantee more eyeballs on ads and product as well as guarantee conversation that La Liga that showed games to sleepy eyes.
Premier League schedules were also slightly better for the different time zones across the world and different night daytime cultures. Their viewership and popularity then skyrocketed as cable got popular across the world. Young people could watch Premier League games on Sunday afternoons, but not 10 pm when they had school on Monday.
This also helped Premier League get a hold in Asian, North American and African markets than La Liga or Serie A. The Premier League also has a diversity of viewership.
As much as we blame streaming for shortening attention spans and the increased obsession with shorter releases, Friday releases na the grandpa to streaming for this one. You will have a short attention span if your consciousness is saturated by artists who all feel they must release music on Friday or die - pretty much.
How do we adapt?
Artists should think about themselves rather than simply following trends. Do you want to simply follow trends and join in saturating your potential new listener with content or do you want to hope for playlist placement that you might never get or do you simply want to be heard?
Artists need to start wanting to be heard. You have a higher chance of being heard on Monday or even Wednesday than on Fridays. The problem is even that some artists don’t realize why they release music on Friday - it’s become like subconscious tradition.
How do we solve the larger problems?
Systems need to adapt. Streaming platforms are killing themselves by not helping artists to understand that music shouldn’t only be released on Fridays. Greater plays equals great prospects for streaming platforms. When people feel the need to play music every day of the week and not just Fridays, numbers will be better.
As for Billboard, there should also be a way around things. For now, we wait…
#ListenAfricaExtra Here are additional bits of content from the past week;
Excel Joab speaks with Yemisi Fancy on this episode of Buzz Discoveries.
On the latest episode of Facts Only, Motolani Alake discusses the prospects of Wizkid’s anticipated album, Made In Lagos.
You can read interviews with Cobhams Asuquo and Ransom Beatz, the Abuja-based producer who made ‘Yaya’ for Tekashi 6ix9ine.
Steve Dede speaks with UFC Champion, Kamaru Usman.
Jide Taiwo speaks with legendary Nigerian artist, Kollington Ayinla.
Fu’ad Lawal, Editor-In-Chief at Zikoko starts a newsletter, Vistanium.
Veteran Culture Journalist, Ayomide Tayo launched the first installment of his newsletter, Naija Times.
Veteran Journalist and Tech professional, Chiagoziem Onyekwena also manages GetDotAfrica, a weekly newsletter on happenings in African Tech.
Davido Adeleke, Head of Communication at Eko Atlantic started Communique, a newsletter.
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Thanks for this..i hope these artists will learn.