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“In a world where consumer free time is limited, how we choose to spend that time requires calculation. “What I enjoyed the most about Vince’s new album is its brevity,” said Zisook. Still, critical reception for the new Drake and West albums was mixed, with many fans creating their playlists condensing the projects to perceived better quality and a less time-consuming listen. Recent top-selling albums by Drake and Kanye West were bloated affairs, each clocking in at well over one hour in length. It’s also the only album to feature fewer than 15 songs. Cole’s The Off-Season, is less than 40 minutes long. 1 on the Billboard Top Rap Album charts in 2021, only one, J. Most new artists on TikTok need to grab the attention of someone with a catchy hook or easy-to-follow call and response or dance-related lyrics quickly, leaving storytelling in the past.īut it’s unlikely any change in album lengths will happen quickly. 1 place for new music discovery for users of the platform. Juxtapose this with new research stating that TikTok is the No. Artists such as Nas, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim and others wrote screenplays as much as they were writing rap songs. Rap’s golden era was built on storytelling and taking listeners on a journey. “Nonstorytelling artists are best suited getting in and out of tracks.” “The construction of longer albums to boost opening-week streams, I think, will decrease, as we see the total run time of individual tracks continue to decrease,” Zisook said. “Many of these artists finding fame through TikTok or social media don’t necessarily have an album, let alone multiple albums, in them.”Īnd as music fans’ choices for entertainment grow with a variety of all-you-can-consume streaming services from TV, film and gaming, and a large amount of music discovery happening outside of Spotify on platforms such as TikTok and Twitch, the intentional stuffing of albums to boost streaming numbers may begin to wane. “I think we could eventually start seeing more singles deals and contracts structured around what makes sense in today’s marketplace,” said Zisook. Others in the industry believe changes to recording contracts may nudge this trend forward. Cole performs during the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena on Sept. “We have a project coming out soon that will only be 10 or 11 joints,” said Maine of a forthcoming Lil Wayne album.
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“Wayne’s thinking process, from what he and I spoke about, was we look at our albums as feeding the people like food, so he always wanted to make sure the consumer was full after they listen to the album,” he said.īut the trend toward longer albums may be changing. Maine, president of the Young Money record label, recalled the thought process around crafting longer albums, such as 500 Degreez, which was released in 2002. In the pre-streaming era, whether an artist had 20 songs on an album or 10 songs, what mattered most was the CD sale ringing in at the register.
“Everybody was like, ‘Yo, you gotta put more tracks on there because that’ll get the streams up.’ ” “Wayne had never released an album in the streaming era,” Lil Wayne’s manager Mack Maine said of the 2018 release of Tha Carter V. Still, the change was a revelation for artists of a certain age. “They are undeniably the driving force behind the construction of these massively long albums.”
“The record labels are keenly aware of consumption habits, analytics, trends,” said Brian “Z” Zisook, co-founder and vice president of content operations at music streaming app service Audiomack. And those achievements can help sell an artist to a brand. So an album with 15 or more songs likely stands a greater chance of attracting more streams than a 10-track project.įor the labels, the more songs on an album, the greater the opportunity for artists to achieve coveted spots on playlists and the greater likelihood the album will achieve Record Industry Association of America gold and platinum certifications. Every 1,500 streams of a song from an album are the equivalent of one album sale. In 2018, Billboard adjusted its weighting around streams to album sales. To understand why the music industry believes more is better, look no further than how Billboard calculates album sales.
“There is definitely a conscious decision to how many songs are on it, it’s a streaming strategy,” said Hovain Hylton, president of management at Cinematic Music Group, home to artists such as Cam’ron and Smoke DZA. Vince Staples released his self-titled fourth album, which has only 10 songs and is just over 20 minutes in length, this summer.