Available In Part This Month, and Next Month, and the One After That

Written by Zoe Tevyaw, Photo by Eneida Nieves

The “death of the album” in the aughts and 2010s has become as infamous as any other apocalyptic conspiracy. Did Spotify kill it, or did social media? Is it even really dead? Statistics will give you one answer while your hipster friends might want to differ. The vinyl revival led by worldwide nostalgia and perpetuated by ideas like Record Store Day and “album of the week” trends reflects a consistent tending to the flame. A better explanation for what’s happening might not be a death at all, but a loosening of the knot tying modern artists to the tradition of a 12-track record.

Unless you’re an artist so massive, alternative, or subversive that being offline and unavailable can be considered your brand, your best-bet strategies are rooted in the realm of social media. Belligerent or earnest, most of the A and B-list names in music – and certainly C and below – will be churning out content in preparation for releases. Singles, EPs, LPs, and the like are all treated the same in this sphere: make as much promo as possible and hope something hits the viral market close enough to the release date to still be relevant in the public consciousness.

It’s a tedious cycle, close to two decades old, that only becomes more demanding as the perceived distance between fan and artist continues to fade amidst the rise in social media’s thirst for the person behind the star. It only makes sense that with such intense post-Quarantine upheavals in other areas of the industry, this may follow. Already, there are artists and execs piercing through the noise and shouldering the burden of setting these new precedents, introducing the exciting prospect that conventionality may be thrown away entirely in favor of more individualistic creative expression outside the actual songs.

One of the earliest and tamest of the changes to record releasing has been the steady increase in the number of tracks per album. A vinyl record would limit you to about 22 minutes per side, and CDs turned that on its head. Streaming distribution services allow this freedom in excess, and artists who had little else to do during Covid-19 quarantine evidently spent their days recording albums hitting 20+ tracks. You can see the ramifications in the past 2 years of releases, like John Legend’s 24-track LEGEND or 5 Seconds of Summer’s 19-track 5SOS5. While this flexibility is useful in streamlining full artistic ideas, let’s not forget that the increase in tracklists also creates more opportunities to strike gold on a hit – an important prospect in a market where 30-second sound clips are increasingly important and, with some, could make or break a career.

The standards for records and releases are being actively deconstructed, and it feels lawless. This disorder invites a daunting question of whether or not the dismantling of the norm will lead to a new set of rules, or if artists will throw caution to the wind to spread out in the new creative space however they please. 

The most mainstream call to these new creative and increasingly individual strategies would be Taylor Swift’s chapter format used for her re-released albums. “Taylor’s Versions” of the Fearless (2021) and Red (2021) albums were each split into 4 chapter increments released over the course of a few weeks. Six songs each, these chapters are each the length of an EP and are separated thematically. For an artist whose fanbase is constantly yearning for more content, this format – labeled as compilations by Spotify – was able to satiate both the storytelling and sheer quantity needs of even the most diehard Swifties.

Separating musical projects into chapter-like segments is not a new concept. Artists have been writing and releasing multiple records under the same titles, like Nas’s King’s Disease I, II and III (2020, 2021, and 2022  respectively), for a while. What is novel is the new wave of artists taking that idea and running with it into more abstract, experimental areas. Taylor’s strategy introduces a lot of listeners to the idea of further subdivisions in these kinds of projects. In this way, audiences are encouraged to think of the chapters as part of the same “book,” whereas Nas’s three King’s Disease albums are more of a trilogy of them.

Imagine Dragons’ 32-track double record Mercury Acts 1 & 2 (2022) bridges these two ideas. The “acts” system serves as another version of the chapters subdivision, yet provides two complete ideas as would be present if the two parts were separate albums in the same series. Weezer’s recent SZNZ project, inspired by Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons, similarly expands on the mold by releasing each new season as an additional disk upon the previous, ending the project with SZNZ: Winter (2022): 28 tracks over four disks with only seven new songs conjoined with all 21 previous tracks of fall, summer, and spring.

These kinds of breaks from the form feel refreshing and exciting, and the artists spearheading the changes seem ingenious for shaking things up. In both artistry and business, they seem to be making room for more individualistic expression, intent on maintaining their own terms. The idea of such freedom is expansive and could hold limitless possibilities for artists. That vastness, however, is likely to prove overwhelming for the artists that may not have such a tight grip on their own art and identity. 

Of course these artists may surprise us all by taking the opportunity for freedom in the release process in stride, contributing to the idea that conventionality is what’s really fading away in the music industry. However, given the track record of less ingenuitive artists following the leader, it is likely that ideas like Swift’s or Weezer’s will simply be adopted into wider practice as a 2020s status quo. This prospect is not necessarily a negative or lazy, given the potential for fan longevity and personalization within the new form. This new release middle man can still be mixed and matched to an artist’s liking enough to strengthen the special relationship to the audience.

While not distinctly coined “chapters” yet, many artists are increasingly dropping singles in groups of 3 or 4 instead of as single releases. With the increase in track quantity, the higher volume of pre-album sneak peeks is proportional. It is a ratio that makes sense to both artist and fan – as album length continues to grow, so does the number of singles released in preparation, inching further towards the average length of a chapter and these segmented releases. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Spotify add “Chapter” as a release type in coming years as the idea catches on, and with big names like Taylor Swift popularizing these subdivisions, it's only a matter of time before the masses cannibalize the term to turn it into something more concrete.