April March - In Cinerama a featured new release?
April March - In Cinerama a featured release week of March 18 '22. It was already released July 2021
4 replies
We actually debated promoting this as a New Release, but honestly the July 2021 release was a Record Store Day Only release of about 1,400 copies. It wasn't widely available at the time and wasn't on any streaming services. If you take a look at the User Reviews for the album, almost all of them are people wishing they could hear it.
Even though this did technically come out last year, since literally only 1,400 people could hear it at the time, we figured people would be interested in knowing it was actually widely available now. For folks who need to know the technical original release date, it is accurately listed on the album page.
"why isn't her album reviewed since it's widely released now?"
@rootsmusic: I guess I don't understand.
The album is reviewed now/still: https://www.allmusic.com/album/in-cinerama-mw0003522458
(Strange, it didn't display the editor review an hour ago.) If it were a limited release, I wouldn't expect any review unless a limited edition (especially those limited not in quantity but in time) of an artist's most acclaimed album. When I used Advanced Search to discover albums fitting my curiosity, I discovered a limited-release benefit series.
I'd missed the original releases of that series, which hadn't been featured in your newsletter. It was surprising to find listings for these digital-only releases, because few digital-only releases (e.g. American Aquarium's series) get listed -- even if not limited in distribution. Presumably, this digital limited release was manually added by the editor who listened and further surprised me with a description (not a critical review).
Here is a great justification for featuring it this week. This fan says that they had been hoping to hear it when it came out, and they were alerted to its broader release via our Featured New Releases.
Ultimately our goal is not to be an arbiter of timelines or a gatekeeper about when albums "officially" came out, but a tool and a resource to help people find the music they love.
"If it were a limited release, I wouldn't expect any review unless a limited edition (especially those limited not in quantity but in time) of an artist's most acclaimed album."
I guess I don't have a good response for this. If an album comes out and our editors like it and think it is worthy of review, they'll review it (regardless of the depth of the distribution).
If the album gets a wider distribution later on and we see value in promoting it to our audience again, we'll try to get the word out.
Ok Zac, that's a perfect reason! The quoted sentence was just differentiating limited releases of a new album from a limited edition of a previously-released album. With limited editions, their reviews help me to decide whether the extra cost (or again paying for most of the songs that I already own) can be justifiable over the original album's. I appreciate your newsletter because I sometimes learn about limited editions, even when not reviewed.