Tyler, The Creator is holding strong with his efforts to curb “passive listening” by rolling out his ninth album, DON’T TAP THE GLASS, on a Monday.
Last October, Tyler employed the same Fridays-bucking approach for CHROMAKOPIA, bagging his third No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the process. But what’s the larger intention behind this top-of-the-week release strategy?
We take a closer look below.
In a 2023 interview with Nardwuar, Tyler proposed returning to Tuesdays as the industry standard, citing multiple reasons.
“My reasoning is, I know people think because of the weekend they can listen to stuff and the streams go up,” Tyler said at the time. “And the streaming people are like, ‘Oh, the streams go up on the weekend!’ But I think it’s a lot of passive listening, at parties or people get the time to go to the gym, so they’re not really listening.”
Dropping earlier into the week, Tyler added, could allow for a more focused listening experience.
“To work on an album for so long and put so much energy into it and for it to be released at midnight…just seems so disrespectful,” Tyler said.
In 2015, Fridays officially became the new industry standard for album release dates. At the time, the move was connected to piracy concerns at a global scale due to differing dates across regions. For those here in the States, the change marked a shift away from Tuesdays.
But a decade into this Fridays-focused methodology, it’s clear not everyone has experienced any benefits.
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