Releasing Albums still matters in the Digital Age
As streaming platforms increasingly favor single releases, artists like Dua Lipa and Jack White demonstrate that releasing albums still matters to an artist’s career even as some genres like electronic music often prioritize singles.
Releasing Albums still matters in the Digital Age
by Harry Levin of Chartmetric
For the past 66 years, the Album of the Year Grammy has been announced at the end of every ceremony. It’s the equivalent of Best Picture at the Oscars or Best British Album at the BRIT Awards. It’s the headlining award.
Even though Forbes headlines are proclaiming “The Music Album Is Dead,” clearly, respected institutions still place albums in very high regard. Consumers also place albums in very high regard considering the resurgence in vinyl. DJs and collectors may be buying singles and 45s, but the casual fan is generally buying an artist’s album on vinyl.
Most of all, artists place albums in high regard because the format gives them an opportunity to share their creativity without limits.
“Most artists in the world that you speak to, big or small, want to release an album,” says Steve Milbourne, a producer, manager, and creative director who has worked with artists such as Andrea Bocelli, Mark Ronson, Michael Jackson, and AC/DC, among many others. “It’s that way of giving an audience a clear expression of who someone is as an artist.”
While artists certainly want to share that clear expression, many modern aspects of the music industry reject the album format. Streaming services lend themselves to singles with the rise of editorial playlists (which simply do not have room for a full album) and social platforms like TikTok befit incredibly short songs.
PinkPantheress is an example of an artist who blew up on TikTok by posting short snippets of music. One of her first songs to go viral, “Break It Off,” is 105 seconds long. Yet even after reaping all the rewards of leaning into limited formats, she still released her debut album, Heaven knows, last year.
“Albums are still necessary for artists to do and it’s still a very good expressive venture for artists to dig into. I don’t think that the general streaming ecosystem, music consumption ecosystem, really benefits albums at the moment, though,” says Harrison Bennett who manages artists like Sippy, Levity, and Zeds Dead, and also runs Zed Dead’s label, Deadbeats. “That’s why I think that it’s even more important now as a vehicle for converting people into superfans and making people excited about every project as opposed to ‘Oh, this is like a hit, and so I’m into it’.”
A “hit” is deemed as such because of its measurable success. Streams. Chart placement. But the Grammys don’t award Album of the Year to the record with the most streams. This creates an interesting conundrum for artists. Releasing an album may not be the best thing to grow their career, but it is a chance for them to create without limits.
In truth, the way an artist releases music is as individual as their music, and fans adapt to the way artists release music whether they’re big or small; whether they’re aiming for the next #1 hit, putting their heart and soul into a full album, or releasing singles to keep their fans engaged.
Consider Dua Lipa, who is currently 25th globally by Chartmetric rank, and 18th in the world on Spotify with 67.7 million monthly listeners. Dua just released her third album, Radical Optimism, back in May, her first since 2020’s Future Nostalgia.
Dua, like many artists in the pop/rock sphere, follows the traditional pattern of releasing an album every few years with a few singles ahead of the long-player. In this cycle the three singles in advance were “Houdini,” “Training Season,” and “Illusion.”
Following the album release, she’s shared five new versions of “Illusion” and a separate album of extended versions of the songs on Radical Optimism, but even on the back of those releases, her listenership has since fallen below 68 million. Clearly, the biggest moment in this campaign was the album itself. That’s what Dua had spent the last four years working on, and now in support, she’s touring again—selling out two nights at Wembley Stadium.
Another artist who demonstrates the persisting value of the album is Jack White. Similar to Dua he releases an album every few years (six between 2012 and 2024), but dissimilar to Dua, he doesn’t release dozens of singles and other variants in between albums. In fact, for his last three albums he either released one or zero singles. His most recent, No Name (2024), was a completely surprise release. No promotion at all.
Other than No Name, White released three albums since Chartmetric has been tracking Spotify data: Boarding House Reach, Fear of the Dawn, and Entering Heaven Alive. Soon after Boarding House Reach came out in April 2018, White had 2.4 million monthly listeners. By the following December he was down to 1.2 million, which is generally where he remained for the next three years when he didn’t put out any new music.
White released one single, “Love Is Selfish,” in January 2022 ahead of Fear of the Dawn in April, which brought him up to 2.4 million once again. Entering Heaven Alive was a companion album to Fear of the Dawn which kept him in the 2.1 million range until September 2022. Then he faced another sharp drop to a plateau of around 1 million until the release of No Name got him back up to 1.8 million.
The spikes for new music and the consistency without it demonstrate that White has developed a solid audience by releasing music his way. People will flock to a new record (even one that receives subpar reviews). Some will lose interest, but his core fanbase will remain. After releasing albums so consistently for 25 years, that’s what his fans expect, and, more importantly, that’s what sustains them.
They’ve developed a connection to their favorite album the same way fans of Zeds Dead have developed a connection to their only official long-player: Northern Lights (2016).
“[Northern Lights] generated super fans. It gave people who were Zeds Dead fans, something more to sink their teeth into and really showcased the full depth of what [Zeds Dead] are capable of musically,” Bennett says. “I see that with their fans all the time. People are always very heavily referencing that album. It’s what got them into this music.”
But Zeds Dead, like the majority of electronic artists, mostly release singles and EPs. Their last longer body of work was their 2021 mixtape, Catching Z’s, which, with the combined release of the single, “late night drive,” gave them a boost of 254.9k monthly listeners from March 5 to April 18, 2021.
Since then they have released 24 original singles amounting to 34 clickable releases on Spotify. Their 2021 single, “Alive” gave them the biggest boost in that period, increasing their listeners by 721.2k from June 27 to Aug 1, 2021.
“I’ve spent as much on singles as I have on albums before,” Bennett says, referring to his role as the label manager for Deadbeats. “If you’re trying to build momentum with an act, then single releases is definitely the preferred method at the moment because it lets you constantly be on cycle. Release stuff as needed and propel the project.”
But this begs the question, would releasing more larger bodies of work lead to sharper growth? If singles can steadily build audiences and provide major spikes along the way, wouldn’t, by that same logic releasing numerous albums amplify that growth?
One genre in particular is the model for examining this hypothesis: rap.
Unlike pop and rock artists who generally release an album every few years and electronic artists who rarely release albums, rappers constantly release albums and other larger bodies of work.
Consider Drake, the 3rd artist by Chartmetric rank and the 12th artist on Spotify by listeners. Beginning in 2015, he has released at least one larger body of work every year. Sometimes two. Chief Keef, another major rapper with 12.1 million monthly listeners has released 36 larger bodies of work since 2015.
“Rap culture was like massively ahead of the curve in terms of creating content, so to speak, and there’s definitely an argument for that. It’s it’s not a new thing. Creedence Clearwater Revival had six albums out in four years before they broke up,” Milbourne says.
It certainly works for Chief Keef. From March 28, 2018 (the very beginning of Chartmetric’s Spotify records on him) until October 26, 2023, a period when he released 14 larger bodies of work, his audience grew by 7.5 million monthly listeners. There were no major spikes for any of these releases, but his audience almost quadrupled. In the same period, Drake, who released seven larger bodies of work, increased from 48.1 million to 77.2 million. Almost 30 million.
Overall, there is no way to formulate any singular release that will guarantee an artist reaches the next level. Linking back to Dua Lipa, the biggest spike in her listenership by far was when she released the single “Don’t Start Now” which currently has over 2 billion streams. When that single came out she jumped from 26.1 million listeners (a career low) to 41.2 million in six weeks and she has never fallen below there since.
There are now seven different versions of “Don’t Start Now” on Spotify, but streaming also gives artists the ability to capitalize on albums the same way, which Noah Kahan has done with Stick Season.
The popularity of that album is based on the title track which has now 1.1 billion streams, but instead of releasing different versions of the single, he’s released two new, and longer, versions of the whole album: Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever) which includes seven more songs than original (21 total); and Stick Season (Forever), which includes 30 songs.
Kahan likely has numerous takes of “Stick Season” in a vault somewhere. And if not, at the very least he could have released an acapella and an instrumental (both of which Dua did for her single, “Illusion”).
But Kahan chose to release more larger bodies of work instead because albums offer that unique expression. Stick Season (Forever) more accurately depicts himself as an artist than another version of “Stick Season.” That’s something he values, his fans value, and the people who pick Grammy winners value as well.
Charts and editing by Sarah Kloboves and Nicki Camberg; cover image by Crasianne Tirado
