IFPI Announces a Friday Global Release Day, Disappointing the Indie Community

The independent community vocally expressed support for a worldwide album release day on Mondays, instead of the IFPI’s proposed Friday release day. AIMS, A2IM, Amoeba, Beggars Group, CIMS, Hastings, Newbury Comics, Rough Trade, SC Distribution, and others all came out against a Friday release day.

News broke yesterday that the IFPI was pushing forward with Friday, an idea backed by major labels, the RIAA, HMV, Spotify, The Orchard, and others. Now that news is official.

The IFPI officially announced implementation of a Friday global release day, starting by summer 2015. Albums will be released at 12:01 AM local time.

+Molly Neuman: From Riot Grrrl Founder to Indie Label Advocate

Martin Mills, Founder and Chairman of Beggars Group, recently said the IFPI was not truly including the independent community in the decision, saying:

“Whilst I acknowledge the needs of a digital world for coordination, it seems to me to be crazy to throw away one of the trading week’s two peaks, and the ability to re-stock and rectify errors before the week’s second peak.”

On the other hand, the IFPI cites peak footfall traffic at retail locations as a reason for switching to Fridays. They also say Fridays are a peak time for social media buzz, saying: “there has been no credible alternative to a Friday proposed that would work at the global level“.<!–/*
* The backup image section of this tag has been generated for use on a
* non-SSL page. If this tag is to be placed on an SSL page, change the
*   ‘http://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/…’
* to
*   ‘https://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/…’
*
* This noscript section of this tag only shows image banners. There
* is no width or height in these banners, so if you want these tags to
* allocate space for the ad before it shows, you will need to add this
* information to the tag.
*
* If you do not want to deal with the intricities of the noscript
* section, delete the tag (from … to ). On
* average, the noscript tag is called from less than 1% of internet
* users.
*/–>

// <![CDATA[
var m3_u = (location.protocol=='https:'?'https://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/r9.php':'http://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/r9.php');
   var m3_r = Math.floor(Math.random()*99999999999);
   if (!document.MAX_used) document.MAX_used = ',';
   document.write ("”);
// ]]>A2IM says:

“A2IM supports the concept of a Global Street Date but for a variety of business reasons as spelled out in our previous comments there are a number of business hurdles that make Fridays less than an optimal date for the United States marketplace and Independents in particular. That said of course as part of the Worldwide music community A2IM will endeavor to make the Global Street Date transition as smooth as possible for our members and our commerce partners and a success for our artist’s fans.”

A move to Fridays will require a changes to charts, supply chains, and marketing strategies. Music Week recently reported that Target is considering dropping music altogether, but Target has since confirmed to DMN that this is not true.

Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more: @nine_u

Image by Spencer Hickman, used under Creative Commons 2.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The post IFPI Announces a Friday Global Release Day, Disappointing the Indie Community appeared first on Digital Music News.

Source: Industry News