It was midnight, March 21, 2000 and 14-year-old Shagufta was waiting outside of one of the biggest Record Stores in the United States for Nsync’s new album, No Strings Attached to be released.
Now, for the most part, it’s all gone digital. What hasn’t changed though is that musicians are consistently and constantly coming out with ways for you to either buy their music or listen to their music.
Katy Perry at a recent concert
Latest case in point, Katy Perry. To celebrate the release of her new album, Witness, Katy installed 41 cameras in a private apartment and broadcast her life for 72 hours on YouTube. She’s not the first artiste to go out of her way and she won’t be the last.
Guns N Roses had one of the earliest and most prolific midnight album releases. In 1991, fans waited outside record stores all over the world to get their hands on the follow-up to Appetite for Destruction, an album they called Use Your Illusion 1.
Prince wasn’t a fan of digital downloads so he included a CD of his LP within copies of select European newspapers and magazines. To this day, 20Ten still hasn’t been released officially around the world.
Wu-Tang Clan literally made ONE single copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and sold it to the highest bidder. It’s arguably the most confident and most audacious of any album ever released.
In more recent times, Kanye West, for his 2010 album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, opted to distribute his excess singles as free downloads on every Friday leading up to Twisted Fantasy’s release. The weekly handout was dubbed GOOD Friday as a nod to West’s record label, and it featured some standout all-star tracks, including collaborations with Beyonce.
The Beyonce approach is in which the said album arrives as a complete surprise and in her case with an accompanying film. Lady Gaga went minimalistic with her latest folksy album Joanne, by heading out to smaller venues, with gigs at pubs instead of arenas to promote her album.
Then of course, there are artistes like Adele and Frank Ocean who have taken time off and decided to come back without a bang and release their albums without any promotion.
Has music moved away from being the only art involved or is marketing the new art form involved in releasing music? There is no right or wrong answer. Let’s just wait for the next opportunity to present itself. Beyonce, are you reading this? We need some fries to go with that Lemonade.
