Surprise albums from Drake and Jack Ü underline a new approach: music is no longer “goin’ up on a Tuesday”

Leave it to the fine folks who run the music business to make an important decision 15 years too late.

After almost two decades of being destroyed by piracy and online streaming services, today (Feb. 26), the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the non-profit group that represents thousands of labels around the world, announced that the music industry is finally adopting a strategy long overdue.

Starting this summer, all new releases will be available around the world on the same exact day—Friday.

The news, which years ago would have been met with cheers and applause, instead landed with a thud. Why? Because, let’s be honest—the music industry is a shell of its former self and nobody really cares. It’s hardly groundbreaking to release all new music on the same day globally, when through the internet—sometimes legally, but most times illegally—that’s already been happening.

When Beyoncé released her surprise album back in December of 2013, I wrote that she’d effectively broken the music business. And she did. But really, the music business was already broken. If Beyoncé had done anything, it wasn’t break the business, but rather, help illustrate how to put it back together.

Beyoncé saw that in the modern day media climate, where people are inundated, second by second, minute by minute, with various new entertainment options, it would be nearly impossible to engage in the traditional promotional cycle an artist needs to drum interest in a new record. That by the time she was done with that dog and pony show, there would be no guarantee that anyone would buy her album. They likely would, because she’s Beyoncé after all, but it wouldn’t be disruptive. It would just be another album in her catalog.

So she sprung it on fans, who were waiting for it, unannounced. Made them pay for it, and made it available everywhere, at once. The fans spread the word, and the media, looking to cash in on that story, helped spread it even further. Beyoncé, for her part, sat back, sipped some coffee and watched the internet do the music industry’s dirty work for it. For the first time since Napster, it seemed, the industry was out ahead of things. Finally.

In the wake of that album’s success, some artists, both big (U2, Madonna) and smaller (Kid Cudi) realized they could do the same thing, and have. Thursday night, Skrillex and Diplo surprised fans with their Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü album during a live-streamed marathon 24 hour DJ set. Two weeks ago, Drake, the most popular rapper working these days, released a surprise mixtape, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, directly to iTunes and various streaming services. As of today, every single song from Drake’s album is on the Billboard charts. Even in an era where these charts take into account far more data than they did in the days of Led Zeppelin, that’s still a mind-blowing achievement.

What it evidences, however, is that the global market, which has never been more connected than it is nowadays, has been asking for a collective on-demand answer. They’ve been waiting for it for years, and really, up until today, they’ve still been waiting, which is the reason why piracy is still such a thorn in the music industry’s side. Streaming services don’t amount to much—to wit, Pharrell earned less than $3,000 from 43 million Pandora plays of his hit song “Happy”—so there’s this still this need to earn some money, any money at all, from recorded music. And having the release dates separated in different markets was not helping things.

On the internet there’s only one market—the internet—so the idea is to get everything everywhere at the same time, so people can stop accessing it illegally. Any artist who has made their music available everywhere at once has seen what the power of that can do.

“The global release day narrows the gap on piracy by making it less likely that consumers will go to pirate sites when they can’t get new releases in their country,” said IFPI head Frances Moore in a statement, which feels like it should have been made back in 2003, when the iTunes store was launched. “This will help channel revenues back to the legitimate rights owners.”

There are obviously larger issues to be worked out here—remember, there are still many physical record stores out there, too—but hopefully, this is a move in the right direction. The only sad part is just how long it took. The music industry these days often feels like its on its last legs, where the idea of selling music at all is primarily an afterthought, so this may be a case of too little, too late.