David Emery OnlineBeirut Pushes Up Digital Release Date
3 August 2011
Beirut's new album, The Rip Tide, is out August 30 physically via bandleader Zach Condon's own Pompeii Records. If your music collection largely consists of ones and zeroes, though, you can hear it a lot sooner: the album's digital release date has been moved up to next Tuesday, August 2.
This sort of thing really frustrates me; there’s no doubt this is just a reaction to the record leaking, and actually it does far more damage then a leak could ever do. Firstly, it’s a pretty good advertisement that the record has leaked but more importantly rushing the digital release just screws up any change of the release making a big impact when it properly comes out. Beirut – I would have said – is in a prime place to establish themselves as a serious band, and a good chart entry would have done a lot to aid that; by doing this, the album will look a lot less impressive when it does finally come out properly.
And sadly, chart positions do matter; I don’t think – unless you’re in the top 5 – they make a huge amount of difference to fans, casual or not, but they make a massive difference to the rest of the industry; a good chart position opens doors, a bad (or lower then expected) chart position closes them.
A leak only really impacts people that probably weren’t going to buy the record anyway – rushing forward a digital release can – in some cases, not all – destroy your campaign.
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