A few weeks ago, I was watching Grady Smith’s review of Taylor Swift’s newest album, Lover, shortly after the album’s worldwide release. Aside from enjoying Swift’s seventh album much more than any of her previous pop albums, two very distinct thoughts stayed with me the rest of the night. First, I was amazed with how large of an impact she still has on the country genre, years after switching to pop. The amount of coverage across every medium of the genre was staggering, with everything from reactions to reviews to covers flooding the Internet. It is abundantly clear that country music hasn’t come close to replacing the gaping hole the superstar left with her departure.
The second lingering thought was an observation related to Grady Smith’s comments about the length of Lover. As a critic, he found the project to be slightly fragmented and unfocused, and suggested a few songs could have easily been cut from the album. He cited the album’s length of 18 songs as being far too long, but perhaps strategic. He theorized that in the age of streaming, artists are now releasing longer and longer projects in order to rack up as many streams as possible. As discussed numerous times, streaming services have revolutionized the music industry and are now dominating the market. The majority of revenue for artists now come based on the number of streams, as opposed to album or song sales. Therefore, I immediately sensed validity in his theory and set out to prove it. In order to do so, I created a data set of mainstream country music projects over the past few decades.
Part 1 - Tracking Average Country Music Album Lengths
Browsing my streaming platform of choice, Spotify, I cataloged albums released by 61 different country artists. Given that Taylor Swift is what sparked this data study, I decided to “grandfather” her album catalog into the data set given her start in country music. However, I did exclude the many Christmas albums country artists have produced as they are not indicative of typical studio albums. Finally, since I set out to analyze album length, I did not include any EPs as they are generally much shorter than full albums.
In the issue of full disclosure, there is one artist whose albums were cataloged but ultimately kept off the data set in the chart shown below. While I never like to kick someone when they are down, I had to remove Brad Paisley’s discography because they were true outliers. Paisley’s eleven studio albums average a length of over 16 songs per album, and include projects with 21 songs, 19 songs and two albums with 17 songs each. Paisley has had a rough go of it lately with his recent music failing to put up the numbers he used to, as well as not being asked back to be a host of the 2019 CMA Awards after many years of doing so. However, things are looking up for him as it was just announced he will star in a new TV show on Amazon’s television streaming platform. Regardless, while I enjoy many of his albums, they skewed the data too much to be included in the final analysis.
While I expected to see album lengths rising over time, the magnitude of the results was surprising. The chart above shows average country album length from 1981 to 2019, based on the discographies of the artists in the data set. As clearly shown by the graph and linear trendline, the average album length has grown a significant amount over time, culminating in 2019’s average being the highest by a significant margin. In fact, 2019’s average of 14.25 is more than a full song per album higher than the next highest year, 2014, which averaged 12.7 songs per album. 2019’s average album length is also over 2 songs higher than the overall average of the 303-album database, which comes in right around 12 songs per album. This definitively confirms Grady’s suspicions that albums are becoming increasingly long, especially in the current year of 2019.
What is even more about amazing about these results is that all of this album data is exclusive of extended versions of albums. Meaning any deluxe, acoustic, or commentary editions of an album are not included in these averages. By definition, deluxe editions of albums feature bonus songs that add on to a previously released project, and one might think an influx of extended album versions is causing this rise in song count per album. However, it is actually the exact opposite. As shown by the graph below, the percentage of albums that received extended version treatment behaves as a bell curve.
As a general trend, extended versions available on streaming platforms were introduced in the early 2000s and peaked in 2014 before falling to very low percentages in recent years. Of course, extended versions and specifically deluxe editions are released after the original project has mostly run its course, therefore some 2019 projects may still see extended versions. Yet there are currently no extended versions of 2018 country albums and clearly shows that this is no longer widely employed. Thus, it makes the average album length numbers legitimate, and 2019’s incredibly high average even more interesting.
To be fair, this data does span a relatively large timeline that includes multiple eras. It begins in 1981 right as the compact disc (CD) was invented, spans through the launch of the iTunes store in 2003 and continues through today’s age of streaming after Spotify’s launch in 2008. Therefore, albums before the age of Internet enabled music consumption were physically limited on the amount of songs an album could hold. This very much explains the low averages seen in the 80s and 90s, and the subsequent increase in average album length at the turn of the millennium. Yet still, the extend at which these album lengths have increased in very recent years is amazing. The technological limitations on storage capacity became irrelevant a decade ago, so why have artists waiting until now to dramatically increase their album lengths? The answer to this question lies with the super marketing machine that is Nashville’s Music Row, and their newest promotional tactic.
Part 2 – The Genre’s New Album Release Schedule
To best illustrate this tactic, it’s necessary to look at major label artists who are set to release new albums this year. Look no further than the guy dominating every aspect of the genre right now, Luke Albert Combs. His much-anticipated sophomore album, What You See Is What You Get, is set to be released on November 8, 2019. It will feature a whopping 17 songs - an album length that was earlier identified as an outlier for Braid Paisley because his album was from 2003. Here in 2019, that’s not even out of the ordinary.
In promotion of this album, Combs released “Beer Never Broke My Heart” as the lead single off the November project back in...wait for it, May 2019. To be exact, May 8, which means there will be a full six months in between the lead single and full album release. This is an exceedingly long timeline leading up to an album, but of course is strategic. While he doesn’t need any help building hype around the album, he is spending the half year in between the two dates releasing other tracks ahead of the full album. As discussed in my previous post, Combs and contemporary Kane Brown have made a habit of using social media engagement to deliver new music consistently and build buzz around their careers and projects.
Currently, there are 6 out of the 17 tracks off Combs’ second album already available to the public. With still over a month until November 8, there’s a high likelihood that even more will be released. This is very different than traditional album releases of the past. Gone are the days of rushing to the record store or Walmart on release day to hear every song for the first time. Now, songs are parceled out over a long period of time in a clear attempt to extend the hype and momentum of an album for as long as possible. It has worked exceptionally well for the North Carolina native, and Nashville has taken notice.
One artist who is employing a similar tactic is Miranda Lambert. After a 2016 double album that didn’t see the same commercial success she usually attains, she is preparing for her next album, Wildcard. Set to be released on November 1, it will feature 14 songs (right around 2019’s average length). To promote this album, she released her lead single off the album, “It All Comes Out in the Wash” on July 18, 2019. This means there will be a gap of 3 months and 15 days, or 107 days in total, between the release of the first single and the album’s full release. Also similar to Combs, Lambert has already followed the first single with subsequent releases of five other songs to be included on the project. That means that a full month before the album release, almost half of the album is already available.
Finally, Jon Pardi’s long awaited sophomore album, Heartache Medication, will become available in September after the huge success of his 2016 album, California Sunrise. The 2019 project will similarly feature 14 songs, and five of them have already been released before the September 27 full distribution date. Just as Combs and Lambert have, Pardi has built a buzz around the album with the pre-release tracks. I expect all three of these albums to be successful on the charts - not only because they contain quality music, but because of the hype already built around them. These long release schedules not only effect the hype of an album, but also impacts what is included on the final project.
Part 3 – Release Schedules Effecting Album Composition
Thus far, the data has shown that country albums have become exceedingly lengthy in 2019, which has been matched by the timeline of their releases. The question now becomes, is this merely a coincidence or are these trends intertwined? Personally, I don’t believe in coincidences – and certainly not in this instance.
My theory is that these are both conscious efforts by labels to maximize revenues, which now mostly come through streaming platforms. In the age of streaming, singles are prioritized over complete albums as attention spans have shortened and music consumption rapidly diversifies. In response to this, labels have chopped the album up into a series of singles to be consumed rapidly then discarded. This keeps their artists in the recently released playlists and maintains buzz around albums for long periods of time. In the past, labels would rerelease projects as deluxe versions to elongate the presence of an album in the industry. Now, labels have opted to hype up the highest performing play-tested songs one by one ahead of the album, which has an even greater effect on length of project relevancy. Then, the full release date finally comes around after 5-7 songs have already been expended by fans. Whereas in the past, albums would be 10-12 songs in length, now it would be strange for a “new album” to be released with only a few songs that hadn’t been heard before. Therefore, artists have begun to include more and more songs on each album. This not only delivers perceived value to fans but also creates something even more valuable for artists: streaming potential.
The single has come to dominate the market so drastically that album cuts have become increasingly overlooked. This is what some individuals believe have lowered the quality of these tracks, in which quantity has become emphasized over quality. However, this increased quantity offers the possibility of greater streaming potential for artists. Simply put, a larger catalog theoretically invites listeners to stream more of an artists’ music – especially if someone is going to listen to an album one time through in its entirety. At the end of the day, many artists are looking to make as much money as possible, and with the changing revenue structure of streaming, artists were bound to adapt.
To conclude, the trend of long release schedules and even longer albums in country music has become the new reality. Just like many of the recent changes in the music industry, streaming platforms can be identified as the root cause. There is no better time to be a consumer of music as the availability of music is at an all-time high, and costs being at all-time lows. Fans are benefitting from an increased amount of music from their favorite artists and are rewarding them with the streams to continue this cycle. So, while it may be contributing to the commercialization of lower quality songs, this will continue as long as the money continues to flow into Music Row. After all, it’s important to remember that music is made for the fans – not the critics.