CMV: Music labels have the right to control their artists' works, but they're wrong about cannibalization hurting their bottom lines.
I want to preface this by admitting I have no inside knowledge on the music industry and only a basic understanding of marketing. I do, however, follow my favorite artists very closely and have seen time and again issues with releasing music being the catalyst to a rift between artist and label.
For those who don't know what I mean by cannibalization, it means that a company should hold off releasing a new product if their currently circulating products are still profitable. The idea is that companies should milk the profits of a product as long as they can and only release new ones when the old ones no longer bring in money. In music, label execs seem to think that if an artist releases albums in too short of intervals, then the sales for old albums will slow down or cease altogether.
I believe this to be incredibly short sighted in the music industry. Especially in the internet age where folks rarely buy physical albums, music success is completely built on hype. Because, as a music streamer (like most people), I have access to a wide selection of older albums and songs, I'm more likely to listen to someones older work if they're constantly in the limelight.
One of the best examples of how this works is Migos. While many listeners complained that their most recent album, Culture 2, and the solo albums that two of the three have released so far have been somewhat stale and mediocre, the constant attention on the new albums transitively brings more attention to their older work. One way this works is because longtime fans discuss older, less relevant projects like YRN 2 or No Label 2 online (yes both are mixtapes but the rights are owned by QC/Atlantic), which gives newer fans the direction of learning about the older projects. The main way this works, however, is through the algorithms that the streaming services use to make playlists or "radios". When you listen to an artist based playlist on, say, Spotify, it's not only new music by similar artists that pop up, but also older songs from older projects by the same or a similar artist. If I'm listening to a Migos Spotify playlist, there's a good chance older Travis Scott or Young Thug or Future songs show up as well as a lot of older Migos music.
Staying relevant and controlling the market is how music labels and their artists make money. I understand if the labels are looking to avoid outshining other artists on the label who are also releasing new music, but this often happens because the label doesn't want the artist to kill their own old music. But now that music is so accessible online, the worry of hurting ones own profits off physical sales is a little outdated.
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Posted Jan 15, 2019, 12:38 AM UTC
So you describe this thing called "cannibalization", and describe why it would be bad for record labels. But do record labels even make this mistake? You provided evidence that they actually don't with your Migos example. Labels know that streaming is now all-important, and that pumping out new music is how to keep stream numbers up. (Also why a lot of these pop-rappers like Migos or Rae Sremmurd tend to churn out 20-30 tracks at a time.) Speaking both intuitively and based on actual evidence, I don't think record labels are engaging in "cannibalization" much at all.
Also, I know that artists tend to beef with labels, but I think it's over a lot of things: money, artistic autonomy, image and marketing, etc. I don't think I have ever heard that the source of all this beef is specifically record labels wanting to sit on finished music until older music is obsolete. Maybe sometimes it is about release timing in general, but even that seems pretty rare and when it happens it seems to have more to do with competition with other artists outside the label. Either that, or it is about an artist actually taking too long to make contractually-obligated music when they just don't have material that is up to their own standards. In any case, I think you are definitely over-estimating the scope of this specific problem you are describing.
What made me write this is the current debacle with Lil Uzi Vert and Atlantic records. Uzi posted a video somewhere saying Atlantic was doing exactly as I described, and I vaguely remember this happening quite a few other times with other artists but I can't think of who off the top of my head. I know that this used to happen to Gucci Mane a lot too (per his autobiography). Yeah artists beef with their labels for plenty of other reasons, but with the music releasing method you get a lot of the same issue where the artist has an album ready to go but the label wants to hold off on releasing it. Meanwhile all the hype around the previous release dies even though it's still selling and the musician can't ride the hype into their next album.
So yeah it really does happen. I used the Migos example because, you're right, it's not happening to them and look how much money they're bringing in, both for their label and themselves.