Double-Dipping. Rough Drafts. Leak Dumps. Months Later. Pandemic. The New Deluxe.
Disclaimer: This article isn't funny. Pretty informational, not funny. Apologies.
The streaming era has changed the music industry.
Almost every project is required to have some sort of bundle to maximize physical sales, and the project must maximize streaming units by having either an incredibly quick runtime or 20 songs.
But one change has recently found its way back into the mainstream—double-dipping with "deluxe" editions.
As Complex covered in 2012, the music industry abusing deluxe editions is nothing new. Deluxe editions allow labels and their artists to increase sales with little effort and leans more towards marketing than actual new music.
In terms of music, double-dipping refers to selling essentially the same album and packaging it as something with new added value. Maybe the top single is remixed or a few tracks are converted to different versions that appeal to audiences outside of the artists' target market, but no substantial effort was required for the artist or label other than writing a check.
Look no further than The Weeknd's After Hours Remix-EP.
Although the set of remixes was eventually corrected to serve as a separate EP, the songs were initially added to the actual album, allowing the mistake to boost first-week streams until the real deluxe of three new songs were released a week later.
The Weeknd denied any double-dipping or streaming tricks in several tweets, and the quality of his actual deluxe adds credibility to his denials, but nevertheless, the added remixes gave After Hours a sales boost.
And while The Weeknd may be innocent when it comes to album double-dipping, his most popular artist has no alibi for his deluxe edition exploitation.
NAV was one of the artists covered in last year's debunking the bundle, as his merchandise sales boosted him to his first number one album in 2019. With Good Intentions, NAV re-used his bundle hack and practiced the new deluxe hack to secure his second number one album.
According to Billboard, over 50% of Good Intentions 135,000 first-week sales came from merchandise bundling thanks to NAV releasing 100 different album/merchandise options, including the continued collaboration with VLONE.
As strong of an impact as the merchandise bundle was for NAV, it only accounted for 73,000 sales, leaving him close to the first-week projected numbers of Kehlani's It Was Good Until It Wasn't(80,000 units) and Lil Durk's Sorry For The Wait II(60,000 units) as well as the second-week numbers of Drake's Dark Lane Demo Tapes(79,000 units).
In response, NAV intentionally did the same practice his label founder did accidentally, releasing more songs to stream inside the same project he released two days earlier. With 32 total streamable songs, Good Intentions finished with 62,000 first-week stream units—2,000 more streaming units than Lil Durk's fourth-place project.
Despite exploiting the practice the most, NAV releasing an entirely different project inside a recently released album didn't popularize from his success.
After two years of being tied up in label issues, Lil Uzi introduced a new deluxe practice to the mainstream—release leaks, let the fans pick the leaks and market it as a different project.
The practice gives the fans exactly what they asked for, increases sales of the real project, and absolves the artist from critique because the deluxe isn't a separate project, despite its marketing.
And much like other deluxe album practices, this form of deluxe requires minimal effort. In the case of LUV vs. The World 2, all Lil Uzi did was heighten the audio quality of beloved leaks and maybe add a filler verse or feature. As a result, Eternal Atake sold 247,000 units in its second week—the highest second-week rap sales since Travis Scott's Astroworld did 205,000 units.
Similar to how Travis Scott's Astroworld re-inserted the album/merch bundle into the mainstream, Lil Uzi's LUV vs. The World 2 has shown the industry the possibilities of a deluxe album in the streaming era.
In the past music in between projects would be just that, music cast aside as throwaway releases or shelved altogether. Most fans would have been unwilling to purchase what's marketed as an extension of the same album months later, but streaming has created a new avenue for artists.
Artists are now able to leverage the reputation of old projects to attract listeners to engage with what would be considered throwaways in past years.
The Life of Pi'erre 4 released June 21st, 2019. Pi'erre Bourne released the deluxe edition on June 19th, 2020 with an additional 15 songs.
Despite receiving poor or mediocre reviews from critics, TLOP 4 was met with cult-like appreciation from Bourne's niche fanbase. Releasing a deluxe a year later gives those fans more music to stream and cloaks the music from most reviewers who already criticized the actual album.
The new deluxe album isn't going anywhere, and it's not just sales pushing the development.
The coronavirus pandemic stopped artists from touring and eliminated a major revenue stream for artists and labels. With no tours to help artists stay relevant and paid, deluxe albums allow artists to keep their fans engaged in a time when their reach is limited.
"[My Turn] was such a big project that came out -- this was supposed to be [Lil Baby's] year to go up another level in his career," said CEO of Quality Control Pierre Thomas in an interview with Billboard. "Once we realized that there wasn't gonna be any touring, we were just trying to figure out: How can we keep the momentum going?"
The answer was an additional six songs to My Turn, resulting in an additional 100,000 units sold the following week and the album becoming the most-streamed album in the U.S. in 2020 a month later.
Other artists and labels have noticed the success of the aforementioned examples.
A Boogie recently released a deluxe edition for his almost universally disliked Artist 2.0 album, Lil Durk is set to release a deluxe for his quarantine holdover mixtape, and Earl Sweatshirt is reportedly releasing a deluxe edition of a months-old, 15-minute EP this week.
Whether fans like it or not, labels have found a new marketing hack, and it'll likely last well beyond the pandemic.
"I think that they stumbled upon a new formula," said Head of Urban Music at Spotify Carl Chery to Billboard. "Staying top of mind is a thing that is increasingly hard to do, especially in hip-hop. You come out with an album, there's new music, and then we move on to the next one. It makes sense that artists like Uzi and Lil Baby are feeding their fans more because of the pandemic, but I also don't think it's going anywhere after we go back to normal."
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