Jan Delay: Is it still worth releasing albums?

Jan Delay
Is it still worth releasing albums?

“If you put out an album, it’s out on the same day,” says Jan Delay.

© Thomas Leidig

In times of streaming services, musicians earn less and less. Is it still worth releasing albums? Jan Delay has an answer.

Jan Delay (45) will be releasing his new album “Earth, Wind & Fieren” on May 21st – at a time when record sales continue to decline. Nowadays, musicians mainly earn their money through live business, which has also almost completely disappeared due to the corona pandemic. Is it still worth releasing entire albums or will only singles be released soon? Jan Delay also doesn’t know yet whether he will produce another album. In an interview with the news agency spot on news, the musician talks about the conquest of the music industry by streaming services and explains why there are several one-hit wonders per day these days.

Fewer and fewer albums are being sold. Is it still worth recording and releasing one?

Delay: That’s a good question. For me it always worked out that I released a record with which I went on tour afterwards. This is of course difficult with Corona at the moment. I’m also an established artist, but for the newcomers at 16 or 20, it’s not at all worth making albums. The boys who are just starting out with music will stop releasing albums. With today’s music consumption, that no longer makes sense.

In the future it will no longer be the case that you take a year to write twelve songs and then release them as an album. No, you put out a song every month in a year. Then you always have something new. When you put an album out, it’s out the same day. That’s the way it is nowadays. Even if the live business is possible again after the pandemic, I will also consider whether there will be another album. But I don’t know that yet.

Isn’t it a shame if at some point there won’t be any more albums?

Delay: That’s right. On the other hand: Since albums are no longer worth that much, less work and energy is put into it. The quality has been declining more and more for about ten years. There are fewer and fewer albums that you like to listen to in one go.

More and more singles are being released. By the time the album comes out, you’ll already know half of the songs.

Delay: Exactly. You could leave it that way. You could then put all the songs together in a playlist and that would be the album.

One of the reasons why fewer records are being sold is because of the streaming services. How do you rate the development that streaming is conquering the music industry more and more?

Delay: On the one hand, it’s nice because that’s the democratization of music. Before – even with downloads – you always had to have money to consume music. CD players, MP3 players, turntables, they all cost money. You haven’t needed that for a few years because everyone has a cell phone. Young people in particular have time to listen to music, which is how they determine what happens in the pop charts.

It used to be like this: Jan Delay has 10,000 fans because of me, each of them buying their new album. They listen to it once or twice and then put it in their closet or go to a concert. Today it’s different, because these fans can now stream the album too, so they won’t buy it anymore. In order to generate the value of a sold album via streaming, the album would have to be streamed 1,000 times. What used to be 10,000 albums sold and now streamed twice is now worth 20 albums.

Although the same number of people consume the music, 10,000 albums sold suddenly only become 20. This shows how difficult it is for people who come from before this transformation to keep up. The young people put some songs on repeat and thus generate enormously high streaming numbers. There is no such thing in my generation. It would be kind of embarrassing if, as Jan Delay, like the young rappers, I suddenly tell my fans: “Put my song on repeat all the time.”

In the singles charts you can often read names that you have never heard before. Artists achieve a big hit, but then quickly disappear again.

Delay: That’s the other side of the coin. In today’s model, a lot happens very quickly, but then disappears again just as much. Due to the short attention span, today’s kids also hear a lot of different things, but nothing really sticks. Albums as a format have made something easier to persist. You go to a concert that plays that particular album. This boosts longevity and half-life. But those thousands of individual songs by guys you’ve never heard of were forgotten the next day. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is. Today there are several one-hit wonders every day.

What else do you have planned for this year – also with the beginners?

Delay: I really want to play concerts this summer. Nothing is planned with the beginners yet. I have too much work to do with my own album right now. That will take a while, I want to play the record live too. After that we are guaranteed to sit down again in the studio.

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