Today I’m going to look at the interesting world of release dates.

It has come to my attention over the last year or so, that release dates for albums / singles varies form country to country. However one this that really surprised me was that there are many albums that are released internationally months before any US release date is due. Today ill examine what albums this has happened to and the reasons why it happens.
Sure most people expect that albums will be released in the US before they are released overseas, however this is becoming more false as the days go by. Only the other day I walked into my local record store and sitting on the shelf was Slim Shady LP and Prince Paul’s new album, so what you say, well this other day was a month and a half ago, a whole month before the albums were released in the US, Last year Buddah Monks LP was released in mainland Europe and it still isn't out in the US. On Monday Mobb Deep's Murdah Muzik is due to be released in Sweden while the release date for that is 27th April. Why does this happen????

Basically there are 2 reasons why this happens. But these two reasons are strongly linked together.

Because hip hop is so international, record labels try to release albums at the same date across the world. To achieve this they are sending out the DAT copies of albums to their international counterparts, where as previously most CD’s where made in the USA they are now made in the country they are bought in. Resultingly there are a lot more copies of the originals flying around. However this should not cause any problems with one country releasing a album before another. So to find out why some labels in other countries will release the album before another I went to Sony Music Australia. The people at Sony Australia explained to me just how it works and as a result why they will release the album earlier.

When it comes to counting the amount of sales a record had made, albums that are made in foreign countries are not counted it is strictly based on USA made CD’s. This is because the US record label will sell to one of there international brother the ‘rights’ to produce a album. For a artist like 2Pac (who is really popular in Australia) this ‘right’ will cost a record label around $150,000 for every Million records they sell. Because the USA label has no control over the level of albums produced in foreign countries they cant count the amount of albums sold overseas.
This is where the problem starts, because a international company has bought the rights to produce a album in a country, they have outlaid a huge amount of money. Resultingly they want to get a return on this capital as soon as possible, in essence they want to release the album as soon as they can. However as a general rule the album cant be released internationally before the tentative release date of the album at the time of signing. Ie the contract is signed on 28th of November 1998 when the release date for Murder Music is 9th March 1999. But at this point everyone reading is saying ‘hold up album release dates are always pushed back’ and if you are you are completely correct, this is why album release dates do not mirror each other across the world. So as Mobb Deeps murder Music gets pushed back to the 27th of April 1999 the Swedish company that bought the rights says, fuck off we aint waiting a whole 7 weeks to release this album, we are going to release it on the 9th when we are allowed, this way we will have a lot more money as we will get international costumers after the albums buying from Swedish store.
Another example I was told about was Prince Paul’s album, the release date at the time of Sony Australia buying the album was January 14th. So to maximise profit and get cash flow form the album they release it a whole month before the USA release date. It is basic economics and law that controls the rap industry and as a result we see different release dates internationally, something which will never be fixed, because how are you going to stop someone releasing a album if they have a contract in another country for the rights to make and sell that album??