Earlier in the week, superstar DJ Calvin Harris took to social media to tease his upcoming new single “My Way,” sharing the song’s artwork and a release date for this Friday. The use of similar artwork to that of “This Is What You Came For” led to some speculation that Harris was gearing up with a new album, but now it appears he may be done with LPs all together.
Though the album format has experienced something of a renaissance in dance music over the last year, with a number of acts delivering great records in recent memory including Nero’s Between II Worlds and Flume’s Skin, it looks like the Scottish producer is calling it quits on releasing full length studio efforts.
An insider linked to Harris has released a statement regarding the producer’s position on albums, revealing that he may stick to releasing singles moving forward.
Calvin has always been a forward-thinker and believes just releasing singles is the way forward. Albums don’t sell how they used to and artists are now seeing streaming as the future. Albums are time-consuming and limit artists to cycles rather than having a persistent presence in the charts. Calvin is one of the most-streamed artists in the world so it would make sense to exploit that success.
It’s not exactly a bad idea. Streaming has treated Harris quite well, as his music has reached over a billion streams on Spotify as of 2014. His most recent LP, Motion generated more streams than album sales, with 66,000 copies sold in the US vs. over a billion streams of its overall tracklist.
The move from producing albums to strictly releasing singles is expected to have a big impact on how the music industry operates due to Calvin Harris‘ popularity, although we don’t expect the format will disappear altogether as some outlets have speculated.