The word ‘release’ implies something pent up that is then let loose like a horse from out the stables. Time was in the heady days of pop music pomp that that was indeed a reflection of how the industry worked – there would be a build up to a record’s release followed by a blitz of media interviews, live appearances, poster campaigns, radio plays, pluggers working their patch, adverts and reviews all within a week of the disc coming out.
This was for the lucky few of course at around this time in early 1972 (Jan 7th) the single Changes by David Bowie was released in support of the LP Hunky Dory that has been released in mid December 1971. RCA were apparently wary of spending too much money and energy on promoting the album aware that an image change for Mr B was in the works nonetheless a December and January release were the sure way to bury a record.
Arguably today for the big hitters little has changed a new release by the carrot topped one will be marketed in a very similar way albeit using social media in all its permutations. With so much to divert our attention a record company will have to work just that bit harder as the attention window has contracted. The intention now though is not so much to shift discs, which are little more for major artists than a nice sideline but peak streaming which is the only sort that makes money.
But outside of the chosen few how has the model changed? For artists not in the top 5% physical sales are important and each week as the weekend looms the myriad of online stores will trumpet the release of a batch of new records with fancy die cut sleeves, coloured vinyl anything and everything to attract one’s gaze. The weekly music press so influential up until the early 1990s has evaporated and outside of the Wire music magazine the monthly magazines are retro focussed so who will write about a new release? Websites such as the Quietus have to some extent stepped into the void left by the demise of the music press. The Quietus claim to be independent but how and why certain releases get written about and others don’t is opaque they don’t even publish an address you can physically send a copy of your shiny new LP to.
The Quietus does however produce original copy in contrast many music websites run on a shoestring are little more than fronts for online stores and don’t review releases so much as regurgitate sometimes verbatim the press release. Everything is of course brilliant and a must have purchase.
If the written word doesn’t have the impact it once did what other ways can one get a release to have any traction. There are a myriad number of ‘radio’ stations, podcasts, Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, Instagram, Bandcamp pages and so on all of these will need to be worked to stand any chance of selling 5000 physical copies of anything. This number is coincidentally the initial disappointing sales of Hunky Dory before Ziggy. In most cases nowadays a couple of hundred copies will be shifted with warehouses groaning with unsold stock.
But does any of this matter? There are in truth too many releases chasing the small number of people who still buy music either digitally or physically as opposed to streaming it. Right about now there will be an article somewhere championing the increase in vinyl sales and yes every year the sales do increase but from a very small base. Unless the internet collapses neither vinyl or CD sales are ever going to return to what they once were. There is also a very restricted capacity on new vinyl production and a large percentage of that is given over to repressing old releases. If you want to put out your latest effort on pressed plastic expect to wait almost a year.
So we return to the original question what exactly in 2023 is a release? From the afore mentioned one can see that the industry maintain a digital facsimile of what was once mainstream practice but does that have much relevance to anybody else making music especially in the more left field fringes.
From my own (anecdotal) experience with recent release ‘audience’ is quite a fickle thing. Releases on labels which have worked all the social media bases such as my On One of These Bends LP put out by Séance Centre have sold 300 copies fairly quickly whereas releases on other labels have struggled to get much beyond the 100 mark. Snatch Tapes has in the last three years put out cassettes (once more) but these despite good reviews have achieved (?) little more than sales of 30 copies. A digital only release will be lucky to gat to that number in terms of sales though in both cases streaming of tracks usually via Bandcamp is much higher and in many ways constitutes the audience.
In this context the physical release then is more of a pretext to get/let people hear the music than to sell anything. Two or three plays of a track on WFMU will reach a much larger audience than the physical copy will. One guy who regularly does buy Snatch Tapes releases goes on to then post a track on his YouTube channel this has no noticeable impact on sales but does mean another couple of hundred plays. So a release that has negligible sales may over time reach and audience of a few thousand via various channels and in that context a review a year after release makes as much sense as one a week after.
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