If you have been paying attention to music for even a short period of time you may have noticed that most music is released on Friday specifically at 12:00 am local time. Wildly different albums from Drake's

Scorpion

(2018) to Fiona Apple's

Fetch The Bolt Cutters

(2020) have released on Friday.

Have you ever wondered why? Surely it can't just be a coincidence and of course it isn't.









The International Federation of Phonographic Industry is the worldwide representative of the music recording industry. Huge record labels and organizations are either members of the federation or the organization which represents them is a member. Just to give you an idea of the scope of influence the federation has, the RIAA which represents 85% of all legally recorded music sold in the United States is a member.





There were lots of problems especially in the age of the internet with pirating of music. Different organizations and record labels would release their music on different days in different regions. The United States, for example, would release its music on Tuesdays Well, on June 10, 2015 the IFPI announced Friday would become the global release day for all of its members. As this encompasses the grand majority of the music industry, it just became the date for every album release.





Many charts such as the Billboard Charts, Official Charts from the U.K., the BBC's top 40 charts program, and many more charts had to be moved to accommodate the new release day. It has now become very standard for top artists to drop their music on Friday in hopes of reaching a high placement on the Billboard charts. We've seen many big artists such as DJ Khaled or Nicki Minaj have a social media melt down due to not reaching the top spot on the charts.