When new music comes out, we tend to see it on Spotify on release day. That’s not universally true, but for the labels that have signed up for the service already it tends to be the case (purely observationally). I do wonder what the best approach is:
- Releasing on Spotify early to build hype for the album and getting income for a (slightly) longer period, but risking casual fans being done with the album come release day.
- Putting it on Spotify on release date so that everyone gets it at the same time, both casual and hardcore fan.
- Putting it on Spotify a period of time after release date so that the majority of buyers will have it already (assuming a typical album release and not a “classic” that will sell for a long time) and Spotify is an additional revenue stream. The risk here is that people who want to preview before buying will simply download illegally and never buy the album.
I genuinely don’t know which option is best, but I suspect it’s not the middle-one.