If there’s one thing that’s remained consistent over the course of Tyler, the Creator’s career, it’s his dedication and commitment to his vision. While it may lead to controversy, Tyler isn’t afraid to shake things up. For his new album Chromakopia, this started, literally, with the day the album dropped.
It’s been a while since Tyler’s last studio release, but even for long awaiting fans the Chromakopia era began abruptly. Announcing the album on October 18, Tyler posted a cryptic Instagram video with the album’s release date, October 28. Not only was this notable for being such a short window between announcement and release, but October 28 was also a Monday.
In an interview with Nardwar from last year, Tyler discusses his problems with the Friday release schedule. “My reasoning is, I know people think because of the weekend they can listen to stuff and the streams go up,” he said. “And the streaming people are like, ‘Oh, the streams go up on the weekend!’ But I think it’s a lot of passive listening, at parties or people get the time to go to the gym, so they’re not really listening.” While this may pre-date the announcement of Chromakopia, it’s likely this sentiment informed Tyler’s Monday morning release of Chromakopia.
This is a departure from the standard of popular music, which has gotten fans used to projects released on Fridays. This has even led to the term “New Music Fridays” used by websites such as Pitchfork and Spotify as a sort of weekly holiday to celebrate all the new albums and songs fans get to hear every Friday.
In an article from Vox in 2015, the publication pinpoints the cause of the Friday release, primarily to combat piracy. Before the streaming era, countries around the world would release albums on differing days. Before 2015, most American albums were released on Tuesdays. According to Vox, this gave artists a better shot at receiving favorable Billboard chart placement, which originally tracked a week as Tuesday to Tuesday. Tuesday also allowed record store owners, or any other place that sells physical media, to have a weekday to prepare shelving and unpackage any new albums arriving at the shop.
While traditionally people would wait for the album to appear on store shelves, with the internet, it became simple for countries that received albums first to upload them online. Major labels felt that this was impacting sales, so the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents a worldwide council of record labels, decided to release music starting on Friday. Even at the time, however, there was criticism of the move. Martin Mills of British record label The Beggar’s Group ominously stated, “I fear this move will also lead to a market in which the mainstream dominates, and the niche, which can be tomorrow’s mainstream, is further marginalized.”
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