~4 month gap between album announce and release

whats the big deal with announcing an album on the internet early with a release date ~4-6 months in the future?

i understand that albums need to produced, pressed and distributed ... and that the labels like playing the big hype game ...

but in the end do people have the patience for 4 months of waiting. to me the wait is fatiguing.

if it takes 4 months to press/distribute an album ... maybe don't announce it 4 months in advance.

surely the *surprise*!!! new album + 'look under your seat' you can buy it now (receive it next week tops) instant method would work better ??

watmm. how do we ... as a collective of music appreciators / makers, etc. ... break this gros fatiguing trend ?

I just wait for it to come out. Not really a problem...

  On 1/28/2016 at 7:56 AM, bitroast said:

surely the *surprise*!!! new album + 'look under your seat' you can buy it now (receive it next week tops) instant method would work better ??

"surely" "work better" for who?

It does seem a tad daft these days, but this was the norm for years. You'd get the first single on the radio a couple of months before the album came out, released a month before it. It's definitely easier, and more common, to have a shorter lead time these days, but it's nothing new to have it so long.

Hype building, make people really feel they want it.

In the last 10 years or so have there been any biggish albums that were given this kind of lead-up time/hype and succeeded in not leaking prior to the intended release date? Just curious to know, can't think of any off the top of my head.

Seems to me that this would pose a significant enough ri$k so as to curtail the practice, and yet is hasn't. Like just today both Rhianna and Timmy Hecker woke up to find pee in their cornflakes.

  On 1/28/2016 at 8:49 AM, Joseph said:

 

  On 1/28/2016 at 7:56 AM, bitroast said:

surely the *surprise*!!! new album + 'look under your seat' you can buy it now (receive it next week tops) instant method would work better ??

"surely" "work better" for who?

 

not one person specifically... it's more just the general vibe of it all. i think it's lame.

In my experience it's much easier to deal with the wait if one doesn't read the hype threads on places like WATMM.

had a little rant about this during Syro / Tomorrow's Modern Boxes release

I wonder if having a big lead in, a leak, news about the leak, complaining about the leak, etc. is all part of the PR plan? Am I being to cynical?

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:11 PM, caze said:

I wonder if having a big lead in, a leak, news about the leak, complaining about the leak, etc. is all part of the PR plan? Am I being to cynical?

you're probably right tbh

You kids want everything instantly these days, with your damn Mytubes and Twitterbooks, now get off my lawn!

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:18 PM, oscillik said:

 

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:11 PM, caze said:

I wonder if having a big lead in, a leak, news about the leak, complaining about the leak, etc. is all part of the PR plan? Am I being to cynical?

you're probably right tbh

 

lopatin definitely doesn't like it

https://twitter.com/0PN/status/692829303810191360

https://twitter.com/0PN/status/692829485826183169

More tweets on the matter on his account

And about the 4 month wait thing, I guess if labels do it it's because it works better for them. I as a consumer don't really care tbh

i guess its not really a 'problem' so much as it's me ranting about the style of marketing. probably specifically because the marketing is aimed directly at people exactly like me, i'm a people like me, and the marketing generally works. it captures my attention, i know about the music and want the music. but then end up getting frustrated by the wait. i can't just ignore it by telling myself to ignore it > :|

ugh.

is 4 months of hype and marketing building really that much more effective than 1-2 weeks of really focused promotion. announce album, hypehypehype, give people opportunity to buy it week later while ' the iron is hot '.

for example, i was interested in hearing new tortoise album ~while back when the album was announced. but now my excitement has fizzled and im not interested anymore. maybe that's a poor example, cos you can then look at the new opn album and point out how i purchased the album pretty quickly after it dropped. but that's a poor example as well because opn's previous albums left an impression on me and me (+others) were going to buy a new release the moment it dropped regardless.

I agree 1000%. I don't get it. plus I don't listen to singles because I wear it out and then skip it on the album.

  On 1/28/2016 at 12:15 PM, Chesney said:

Hype building, make people really feel they want it.

You (bitroast) cannot forget that most people will not know about a pending release until it's marketed to them for the optimal period, especially for an artist they currently hold a marginal or passing interest in, or even for regular fans. Not everyone's plugged in to the band's twitter feed or facefart. So it still makes plenty of sense that four months would be required. They're going to need to gauge the response from fans and massage the media feedback, so they can push orders from stores, move the most units on release day. It's a business.

  On 1/30/2016 at 1:56 AM, bitroast said:

is 4 months of hype and marketing building really that much more effective than 1-2 weeks of really focused promotion. announce album, hypehypehype, give people opportunity to buy it week later while ' the iron is hot '.

It would be nice for fans if everything worked that fast.. but 9/10 people don't keep up to date with their favourite artists on a weekly basis, labels generally want to spend as little as possible on promotion and (for the most part) these bands/artists have been grinding away on these releases for a long time. They want to prolong their album release cycle for as long as possible to do justice to the time they put into making it.. thats how I see it anyway. The sooner they push it out the door, the sooner they have to make the next thing.

I think you need at least 6 weeks from announcement to release, the idea is to gather as many people as possible to buy it on release day and get it high in the charts.. 1-2 weeks just isn't enough to tell ALL of your fans without a lot of money/online presence.

the irony is that all the hype and talk and acclaim/discussion of such albums lasts days at the most...maybe a week or two

I mean seriously some releases have maybe a 48hr window of super popularity before people move onto to other stuff (exception being super fans)

in the past big albums would be talked about for weeks and months and some singles would dominate the entire year or more on the radio - the internet killed that long ago

More than 4 months is a bit much but it has to be a really long time for me to be irked. The Grimes album being a 2 year long odyssey or scrapped albums and slow teasers lead to a very anti-climatic release imo

I'm a bit with delet... and clevreuse on this one - some time is good

I think ideal a 2-3 months is enough OR something like a very early teaser preview 6 months + ahead of time and then the "marketing" for a few week or a month or two

I've noticed too many artists now drop albums as surprises...that must indicate something about the state of things

Delays are annoying. It's not always to with building hype and shit. The most frustrating release delay in my lifespan was the Scintilli one, that was awful. I think it dragged out for well over a year. Plaid didn't address anything, their silence was deafening, even now they haven't given any good reason for such a ridiculous timescale of dithering. It was dreadful PR but I think they learned from it.

theres so much music being released that it kinda makes sense to have a proper build up with high profile releases. i dont mind. the album wont be any better if i liste to it sooner after i learn about its existence. theres so much music out there, just listen to something else.

I figure for more marginal artists the lead-up time is allotted to allow preorders to accrue, then the number of physical pressings can be somewhat proportionate so the label doesn't end up with stacks of unsold records clogging their inventory.

With an artist like Radiohead, or Beach House, they can get away with announcing an album and having it release three days later because they will sell out whatever volume they press due to their notoriety.

The prerelease leaking thing, yeah that seems like a lesson that should've been learned decades ago at this point: if you pass out promos there will be at least one unscrupulous person down the chain who'll leak it. Don't even understand why promos are still passed out in that fashion. Why not just email the single to stations as an mp3. I guess the main issue there would be that reviews would come out later than the album release because reviewers would be hearing the new music at the same time as us. That honestly wouldn't bother me, but my business acumen is perhaps less honed than some.