Billy Corgan has announced that he will be starting a new, three-part
musical project for 2017. For one month, the Smashing Pumpkins singer will
be travelling the United States on the “Thirty Days” project, documenting the
entire trip though releasing music, interviews and videos. The journey is
expected to yield a collection of the singer’s favorite 50 songs that he has
written (dubbed “50 by 50”), a covers album and an entirely new album.
This isn’t the only innovative idea an artist has had on the
subject of releasing new music. There have been many artists that have changed
the album release game forever with just one out-of-the-box idea.
Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s top new music outlet, has found
seven artists who have turned the music industry on its head. From giving away free
music to releasing music unannounced and more, these artists have changed the
way we think about how an album gets released.
1.
Smashing Pumpkins, ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’:
Corgan is not new to finding different ways to release music. In 2009, the
singer decided that it would be a good idea to release a new song on the band’s
website for free every week for 44 weeks, ultimately leading up to the release
of the ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope.’ Unfortunately, the project was never
finished. Between the ten songs from the original project and ‘Oceana,’ ‘Teargarden’
only yielded 23 songs.
2.
Radiohead, ‘In Rainbows’: The prospect of
releasing an album at a pay-what-you-want price doesn’t seem that crazy
nowadays with all the legal, free music you can find online from bands who
really want you to hear their music. But in 2007, when Radiohead decided to
release their seventh album, ‘In Rainbows,’ in such a way, the idea that
someone could opt to not pay for an album was crazy, particularly to a music
industry that bases its worth on album sales. The joke was on the record
industry, though, as ‘In Rainbows’ became the band’s most successful and
top-selling album to date, even before getting a physical release two months
later.
3.
U2, ‘Songs of Innocence’: The thought of an
artist giving away their album seems like a good idea and an amazing
opportunity, especially if you are as famous as U2. But when you force an album
on people, they tend to get angry. Such is what happened when the band released
‘Songs of Innocence’ in 2014. The band had a deal with iTunes where the album
would be automatically downloaded to everyone’s iPod without consent. While the
deal got the album “to as many people as possible,” and got people talking
about them, this method mostly just got people annoyed.
4.
Jay-Z, ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’: Take what U2
did with ‘Songs of Innocence,’ add consent, and you have a plausible idea that won’t
turn people against you. When Jay-Z released ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’ in 2013,
he struck a deal with Samsung to distribute a million copies of the album
through a special app four days before the album hit stores. People got excited
for the album and on the day of its official release, immediately went platinum.
5.
Beyoncé, ‘Beyoncé’: Most of the time, the
consumer knows when an album will drop. There is usually press surrounding it
and promotion leading up to it. But in 2013, Beyoncé decided to forgo all of
that and release her new, self-titled album secretly on iTunes. The release
came with a visual album, with cinema-quality videos made for each song on the
album. This worked really well for Beyoncé. So well, in fact, that she did it
again in 2016 with ‘Lemonade.’
6.
Kanye West, ‘The Life of Pablo’: 2016 was the
year that streaming services really broke out as a means to get music to
people. Kanye West seems to know that better than anyone else. He released his
seventh album, ‘The Life of Pablo,’ exclusively to Tidal for its first six
weeks. Not only that, but every time you listened to it, it might have been
slightly different because he kept tinkering with the songs the entire time,
calling the album “a living, breathing, changing creative expression.”
7.
Wu-Tang Clan, ‘Once Upon a Time in the Shaolin’:
What’s better than releasing an album to the entire world? Releasing it to one
person. In an attempt to turn their 2014 album into a piece of contemporary art,
hip-hop veterans Wu-Tang Clan released one physical copy of ‘Once Upon a Time
in the Shaolin.’ The group toured it to various galleries and art museums before
auctioning it off like an artist would do with a painting. ‘Once Upon a Time in
the Shaolin’ now resides with the highest bidder: noted internet and
pharmaceutical troll Martin Shkreli.
In the modern age of the music industry, there are many new
and exciting ways artists can release their music to get people’s attention.
These albums prove that there is no one linear idea of how an album must be
presented to the public. There is always room for new ideas and innovations in the
field. Billy Corgan’s newly announced ‘Thirty Days’ project is proof of this, continuing
to challenge how music is released in the 21st Century.
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Find music from these artists and more at Vinyl Bay 777,
Long Island’s top new independent record shop. Browse thousands of titles on
new and used on vinyl, CD, cassette and DVD, as well as memorabilia and more in
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