By BEN SISARIO
SUMMER means music. It’s the season of the beach blanket jam, the prom song, the blockbuster movie soundtrack, the open-air amphitheater show.
For the music industry, however, summer has always been something of a paradox. It’s a crucial time for singles — there’s no better exposure for a pop song than to have it pumping out of Jeeps and boomboxes — but when it comes to albums, summer tends to be Tumbleweed City. To maximize sales around the year-end holidays, record companies often withhold big releases until the fall, leaving few major titles for July and August.
Luckily for fans, though, that pattern is changing. In a sign that record labels are relying less on the fourth quarter, the docket of releases this summer is one of the strongest in years.
New albums by Coldplay, Usher, Lil Wayne, Nas, T.I., Slipknot, the Game, Solange Knowles and the Jonas Brothers are just a few of what Billboard magazine counts as 180 significant records coming out between now and the end of flip-flop and cocoa butter season. (Whether they actually come out on schedule, of course, is another story.)
Record companies, retailers and artist managers are hoping that a better summer calendar will entice listeners back into stores and, after seven years of slipping sales — total album purchases have dropped 36 percent since 2000 — help stanch the bleeding.
“The retail community has been lobbying for years to try to smooth out the path so that the release schedule is not so packed, come fourth quarter,” said Ed Hogan, the director of music at Best Buy.
The last three months of the year typically account for at least a third of the year’s sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But after a dismal fourth quarter in 2007, record companies are opening up to the idea of releasing big records earlier in the year. And a few major acts have already proved that fans are perfectly willing to open their wallets in the summer.
Last year the Atlanta rapper T.I. released his “T.I. vs. T.I.P.” on July 3, violating a time-honored industry rule: never put out a high-priority album near a major travel holiday. But “T.I. vs. T.I.P.” sold 468,000 copies in its first week, easily reaching No. 1.
The lesson was that a major artist with a strong fan base can release an album anytime, if a proper marketing plan is in place. This year’s T.I. album, “Paper Trail,” is scheduled for Aug. 12, deep into the season’s dog days. But T.I. has been promoting it since November and has doled out news and music to fans through his social-networking Web site, StreetCred.com.
Julie Greenwald, the president of Atlantic, T.I.’s record company, said August can be a strategic release date despite the industry’s conventional wisdom that consumers are less interested in buying records in the summer. A late-summer album can profit from both initial fan attention and interest that can be stirred up around the holidays once a second single arrives.
“Now there’s even more reason for people to buy your album,” she said. “For the people who are the second ones in, when they hear two joints that are bona fide, that’s usually when you catch them.”
Some of the biggest rap records this summer are coming out near July 4. Nas’s new album — which originally had a racial epithet as its planned title but, according to an announcement this week, will now be released without one — is due on July 1, the same date as new records from 50 Cent’s G Unit and Busta Rhymes. On July 8 Geffen will release the Game’s “L.A.X.”
It’s a good summer for indie rock too. Weezer’s self-titled album is due on June 3. (It was moved up three weeks after it leaked on the Internet.) Wolf Parade’s “At Mount Zoomer” comes out on June 17; the Hold Steady’s “Stay Positive” arrives on July 15; and the first solo album by Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes is due on Aug. 5.
A summer release also naturally coincides with touring season. With live performances now accounting for a much bigger chunk of artists’ revenue, they and their managers are keen to schedule an album release to promote concert dates. It’s no accident that My Morning Jacket, for example, a band that does very well on the road, is putting out its new album, “Evil Urges,” on June 10, just before the Bonnaroo festival and its full tour.
Retailers say that spreading releases throughout the year alleviates the annual fourth-quarter glut, when many worthy albums are inevitably overshadowed by the biggest and most heavily promoted. But they are also concerned about a seesaw effect, with overcrowding merely shifting from one season to another.
“It’s feast or famine,” said Don Van Cleave, president of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, which books retail promotion packages for labels, like listening posts and store displays.
“So far this year it’s been very difficult to find enough titles to fit into our programs,” he added. “All of a sudden this summer we’ve got way too many records to serve.”
No one is expecting labels to abandon the fourth quarter completely, of course. But for an industry that has been hard hit with declining sales and waves of layoffs, doing business in the summer is also a way to economize. The holiday season is the most expensive time to market albums at big-box outlets, which account for about 65 percent of music purchases.
“If you’ve got a record coming out in the fourth quarter, you’re going to pay a lot more to get it placed on sale at your Targets and your Wal-Marts and your Best Buys,” said Marc Reiter of Q Prime, a management company whose clients include Metallica. “Some artists and labels can say, ‘I can come out a little earlier and get my presence in retail for less money.’ ”
Metallica’s next album is one of the most eagerly awaited of the year, but it’s not coming out until the fall.
“It’s not ready,” Mr. Reiter said. “If we could have it out in the summer, we’d have it out in the summer.”
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