Digital streaming was the worst thing to happen to album sales. Barely anyone will dish out $10 or more for an album when, at best, listeners will buy one or two singles they like for 99 cents each — or, at worst, listen to the whole thing on Spotify or YouTube for free.

To combat plummeting sales, artists have taken to releasing new albums with little to no warning in advance, using the instant nature of the Internet to their full advantage.

This phenomenon first appeared with Radiohead’s 2007 album “In Rainbows,” announced ten days before its release and sold digitally through a “pay-what-you-want” distribution system. Though unprecedented, this release lead to wide commercial success and a top spot on the Billboard 200.

Frank Ocean pulled a similar trick with his debut album “Channel Orange” in 2012, releasing the album a week earlier than expected to debut in its first week with a similarly high charting position (especially for a new artist).

Beyoncé’s take on the surprise release, though, was arguably the most important of all. With no indication in advance that she was working on an album at all, the pop star released a new album in the middle of December, becoming a double platinum success.

Last Wednesday, Rihanna pulled a surprise release of her own, distributing her highly anticipated eighth studio album “Anti” as a free download on the music streaming service Tidal. Though sales figures haven’t been announced yet, the album is projected to go platinum, especially with news on Monday that digital streams will now be counted towards album sales.

It seems easy to say that cases like Radiohead’s, Beyoncé’s and Rihanna’s are definitive proof that albums can still sell well in this unfriendly climate. What this argument ignores, however, is how unviable surprise releases are for the vast majority of artists.

Though the nature of these albums’ sudden releases surely helped their sales, without the loyal followings these artists had leading up to their releases, their albums would never have performed so well.

A common argument against music streaming is that it favors the musical elite. Artists at the top of the food chain either bought or earned their way up and make up the overwhelming majority of the money in the business. Artists in this musical “one-percent” are the only ones able to afford bold, high-risk, high-reward maneuvers like these surprise album releases.

Albums as we know them are dead. Ninety nine-cent singles on iTunes dug their graves, while Spotify buried them in the ground and spit all over the dirt covering them. Surprise releases are just a way for the elites of the record industry to pat themselves on the back, whisper “everything’s going to be alright” and prove that today’s studio albums are only a novelty or relic from the past.

Music, for the most part, is more disposable than ever. Even I contribute to the issue — almost every new album I listen to won’t get more than one or two virtual spins on my Spotify. In this day and age, cultural events come and go quickly, and this attitude is reflected heavily in how we treat new albums.

Surprise albums are fun to follow for a bit while the rest of your friends are getting excited over them. And I’ll admit I downloaded “Anti” when I first found out it was released. But I still don’t see the release structure being viable in the long run. For better or worse, albums are generally on the way out. Surprise album releases just aren’t the great savior of the music industry that they’re being propped up to be.

Brett Weiser-Schlesinger is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. He can be reached by email at bweisers@syr.edu or by Twitter at @brettws. His column appears weekly in Pulp.

Published on February 2, 2016 at 10:08 pm