According to music insiders and the Sun newspaper DJ Calvin Harris is ready to stop making albums and instead will only release singles as and when they are ready, if indeed Calvin does opt for this decision it could change the music industry forever.
As the digital age takes off sadly artists are selling less and less albums with Audio Streaming accounting for 54% of UK sales last year.
Thankfully LP’s do still sell well with 122 million copies being sold in 2015 but when you look into the figures you will see that this includes downloads and streams so sales of physical CDs are down to just 3.9%! This means that there is not as much money in making music as there once was, so artists are looking for different ways to get their music to consumers, and Harris has come up with a solution for his own problems. Whether this will fix the industries problems or make them worse remains to be seen.
A music insider said of Harris’ surprise decision;
“Calvin has always been a forward-thinker and believes just releasing singles is the way forward.
“Albums don’t sell how they used to and artists are now seeing streaming as the future.
“Albums are time-consuming and limit artists to cycles rather than having a persistent presence in the charts.
“Calvin is one of the most-streamed artists in the world so it would make sense to exploit that success.”
In 2014 Calvin Harris became the first British performer to reach one billion streams on Spotify, and with streaming edging past downloads as the most valuable music format last year, Harris seems to think it makes sense for him to continue to exploit the streaming market as this is where he earns the most royalties.
According to the Sun newspaper John Newman will also follow in Calvin’s footsteps by releasing six singles instead of an actual album, but if the tracks are a success he still plans to release an actual LP.
The ‘Summer’ hitmaker is set to start his music revolution this Friday when he releases new single ‘My Way’.
What do you think of Calvin Harris’ plans to stop releasing albums? Do you think he will spark a new trend for the way artists release music, or do you think albums will still be a regular part of our music industry? Let us know your thoughts over on Twitter @CelebMix.