What if we added MORE tracks?

I think we all know who to blame for the creation of the deluxe album... and that would obviously be LeBron James who infamously claimed to be the person to discover them first.

Deluxe: a definition - luxurious or sumptuous; of a superior kind

How ironic. No doubt this term is used to describe these styles of albums to make it appear as if they are delivering an even better package of tracks than the original album but I would say that their style is anything but luxurious and in fact, destroys artistic integrity. Since the death of the ‘greatest hits’ style of album, the plague of the deluxe album has been attacking the industry for decades and with the influence of certain social media platforms and Billboard changing their rules around the counting of sales. The need for artists to release a deluxe version of albums is only increasing. 

Astroworld - 2018

Reflecting on Travis Scott’s 2018 album Astroworld, it’s clear that a bunch of sneaky label tactics were used to maximise first-week sales surrounding its release. The album in total sold 537,000 records in the first week but what they don’t tell you is that 270,000 of that was pure sales. And the reason that number is so high is surrounding the merch sales. Astroworld came with merch drops and every time something was sold it came bundled with a digital copy of the album. As marketing was so well crafted, Travis selling lots of merch caused his numbers to skyrocket. Since then Billboard revised their methods for counting sales with merch bundles but this didn’t really affect Travis with his latest album Utopia selling just shy of 500k first week. But it’s clear that the industry now needed a new way of maximising streaming and sales.

Mac & Cheese 5 - 2024

French Montana is a scarily popular MC for how unoriginal and boring his sound is. Sitting at a rather large 21 million concurrent monthly listeners on his Spotify page, he continues to land huge placements consistently with his recent release Mac & Cheese 5 sporting features from the likes of Kanye West, Westside Gunn, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Bryson Tiller and more... despite the artist having no real discernible presence on his own record. This album disgusted me as a music fan due to how it was released… in fact, each individual track in this 21-track album was released individually as singles in a staggering FIVE different formats: Acapella, Original, Sped up, Slowed Down and Instrumental versions - no doubt as a tactic to maximise the chance a single track might take on a TikTok sound trend of some kind and a clear attempt of milking the streams of each song to the max. Then after all of this carnage, they go and release a deluxe version of the album….This is an absolute crime and a fraudulent way of getting extra streaming numbers in and was no doubt a tactic the label adopted as a way of squeezing every last drop of money out of this incredibly mediocre record.  

Last year, rapper DDG went under fire for a similar tactic with the track ‘I’m Geekin’. Whilst it was having its moment on TikTok, DDG released multiple different remixes of the track with Luh Tyler hopping on one version and NLE Choppa & BIA on the other. Then came the Nightcore version, then the sped-up version, then the slowed-down version oh and don’t forget the original version. Then after all this came his album ‘Maybe It’s Me…’ having 4 different versions on streaming. This should be banned in my opinion I know it is DDG and French Montana, who aren’t exactly praised for their artistic prowess but this trend totally needs to stop. It’s just a way money-hungry labels can grab onto as much money as possible.

Honestly, I blame TikTok’s ‘sound’ feature as songs sped up and slowed down can now become hits just from as little as 10 seconds of the song making a TikTok sound. Take the track ‘Ecstacy’ by SUICIDAL-IDOL a TikTok hit, on Spotify, it also has multiple versions similar to that of the French Montana album but the actual most popular version of the song is the slowed version as this version was the one that blew up on TikTok.

In my humble opinion, this rise of deluxe albums and multiple versions of tracks shows a concerning trend that labels are becoming obsessed with the pursuit of streaming numbers and TikTok trends for monetary gain. Artists like French Montana and DDG seem to prioritise quantity over artistic integrity, and by releasing music the way they do, they end up flooding the market with various versions simply to maximise profit. This practice not only dilutes the essence of what makes an album but also raises questions about the industry's values. As TikTok's frightening stranglehold on the culture continues to tighten its grip, the pressure for artists to release easily digestible music content for short-form platforms contributes to the reason for this practice. I think it’s time for a reevaluation of these tactics industry-wide to ensure that music continues to be valued for its artistry rather than just its marketability.