Music fans of all genres love when their favorite artists release new music, and it can be especially exciting with the hype created around new releases. Different artists take on different styles or marketing strategies, with some being more drastic than others. Some artists don’t build any hype prior to the release of an album, while others do it by dropping singles that will be featured in the album.
Many artists drop albums as a surprise, without putting out any notice beforehand. Sometimes, all they put out are a few hints that can be hard to find. These albums can be very shocking to fans if they were not expecting anything.
Senior Lucy Battista of Tinton Falls believes that when artists build hype for their new releases, people find themselves more apt to listen.
“I prefer albums with long anticipation like Taylor Swift and Tyler, The Creator,” Battista said. “They get me super excited for the drop with the things they do before it comes out.”
Some artists, like Tyler, The Creator, have hype automatically generated for them due to their regular releases. He has released an album every two years since the start of his career as a solo artist, and since his last release was in 2021, fans are expecting an album this year.
Many other artists go to extremely drastic measures to build hype for their new albums. Negativland, an experimental music band that gained popularity in the 1970s, packaged two grams of a dead member’s ashes with each mail order of the band’s album, The Chopping Channel. This stunt is not what average musicians do and was seen as very extreme by many people.
Sophomore Stella Feinstein of Asbury Park thinks that this drastic promotion for their album was a strange call.
“If the person gave permission, I guess it’s okay,” Feinstein said. “But I think it’s still really weird that they would do that.”
Artists sometimes release a few singles before releasing their full album. Creators such as Boygenius have done this, with the group releasing three songs on their album titled “The Record” prior to its full release on March 31, 2023. This helps build hype and truly get a feel on how the rest of the album is going to sound.
Overall, many artists follow different promotional strategies when it comes to releasing new albums, and these things can affect how the album is viewed or listened to.
“I want to hear singles from albums before they come out because usually based on the artists, each of their albums have a super different vibe,” Battista said. “So based on the single I can tell what the vibe of the album will be and I can get more excited.”
