The 3 Reasons Why New Music Is Released On Friday

You might have noticed that all new music released by record labels always comes on a Friday and wondered why. After all, Friday generally isn’t a great day for communication online (especially via email) as people are especially frantic before the weekend. And if you remember back to before 2015, Tuesday used to be release day in the U.S.

There are actually 3 reasons why Friday was chosen as the global release day for new music.

1. Different territories used different release days and that made pirating easier. For instance, if a territory released new music from a major artist on Monday, it could be up on a pirate site in the old download days before the official release elsewhere on Tuesday or Friday, thereby hurting sales. A uniform Friday release day eliminated that, although that reason doesn’t matter much with streaming these days anyway, although it does play into reason #2.

2. Streaming platforms change their programming and playlists on Friday. Friday is the day that the new promos and playlists come out on Apple Music and Spotify, probably in response to the fact that new music is released that day. That said, music that is released earlier in the week can miss the opportunity to be included on things like New Music Friday or Best of the Week playlists.

3. The most compelling reason for a Friday release day is because of the Billboard charts. The magazine tracks song and album activity from Friday through Thursday. Releasing on Friday gives you a full week of chart action. The Billboard charts aren’t as influential as they used to be, but they’re still the benchmark at most labels.

All that said, Friday can be a very busy and noisy day with so many releases at the same time. That’s probably a good enough reason for an indie artist or band to steer clear of the day and release earlier in the week. A new release needs any reason to stand out, and having less competition is one of the best available.