The schedule goes as so, record an album, release album, tour, 1 to 2 year absence between projects, rinse, repeat. Artists and labels continue this cycle to generate revenue through the sale of albums, singles, and touring. If a release falls flat, the label and artist may be left with an album that has no legs to carry it beyond the profit of first week sales.

An album is the culmination of a year or years worth of writing, recording, mixing and editing. All parties involved have significant time, money, and man power invested into a project that could potentially not return the investment. With the amount of management and development dollars at work it’s hard to believe the record label would settle on the idea of a singular release to recoup their money.

Bands use E.P’s as a way to garner attention from labels and build anticipation for their full length release. Most of the time these E.P.s are released, unnoticed by the general public. These early E.P’s can contain some of the bands best work, or tracks that eventually turn into fan favorites when release on later L.P’s. Coldplay’s ‘Blue Room’ E.P. contains early versions of ‘High Speed’ and ‘Don’t Panic’. The latter of which became a single off their debut L.P. ‘Parachutes’.

If labels were to use the E.P. format for their major releases, with more frequent projects, a misstep by the artist or label would have less of an effect on their overall career. If critics reviews of a full length album are negative upon release, the artist has to wait till the next year or more to redeem themselves. Meanwhile the public moves on discovering new bands and albums, leaving the band to try to remind people of why they were relevant in the first place. For artists with a history of well received albums, a poor one will not be a deal breaker but for a fledging artists freshman or sophomore effort to be crowned a dud spells disaster.

The internet and computers have played the father to music, holding it’s hand while leading it along, showing it the right direction to go. Internet has stayed a step ahead with more creative ways of sharing music, while the music industry holds onto previous technology hoping that innovation will digress allowing them to make a comeback. Instead of shrugging shoulders or waving a white flag, labels need to come up with outside-the-box ways of releasing music. The direction of the music industry is uncertain but one thing is, technology and the generation x will continue to move forward at break neck pace regardless of the music industry.

Share This Post