Friday 10th July marked the first ever globally aligned release date for new music.
The new initiative will see 45 countries (including the UK, the US, France and Australia) release new music on the same day. With the change, new music, including singles and albums (in both physical and digital formats) will be made available from retailers at 00.01 local time every Friday.
Currently new music comes out on different days throughout the world; here and in France, Monday is the traditional day when new product hits shelves. In the U.S. and Canada, it is Tuesday, Friday is the chosen day in Australia, Ireland and Germany.
While most countries have signed up to the scheme, Japan will continue to release new music on Wednesday, two days earlier than their international counterparts.
Glyn Aikins, Virgin Records A&R Director explained:
“Everything is changing to have a global release date, which is Friday, instead of it being a Sunday or Monday in some countries, Tuesday in other countries and so on. It will mean that everything will be released in what they call “day in date” fashion. So it will be, you know, as soon as it’s on air (radio), it has to be available to buy or stream or whatever. It’s (impact) is genre depending, Some things will be blockbuster and just appear at the top of the chats and there are something’s that grow and rise to a particular peak. It’s still going to take the same amount of time to embed it into the wider publics consciousness; I don’t think that will change. It [first week sales figures] will be interesting to see.”