Adult Swim has announced the seventh incarnation of its Singles Program, which has been releasing exclusive, often-collaborative songs by artists from a variety of genres since 2010. For the first time, the series will release one brand new track a week for all of 2017; that’s 52 songs across a range of genres available for free streaming over 365 days. Another new aspect of the program for 2017 is the platform will not be making its tracks available for download, because according to Adult Swim’s creative director Jason DeMarco “people don’t download music anymore.” DeMarco also noted that the program’s number of downloads each year only make up “less than one-sixth of the overall numbers.” But fear not there will be plenty of streaming options available for the series according to DeMaro:
We’ll have our own proprietary player that’s embeddable so that anyone can embed tracks in their blog, but we’re also going to put them on the Adult Swim SoundCloud, at least for now. We’re talking about maybe putting them on Spotify, although that complicates things for various reasons. We put them all on YouTube as well.
Adult Swim creative director Jason DeMarco told Verge that they’re doing it this way this year “just to see if we could”:
We’re doing something no one else does. I don’t know why they don’t do it. Maybe they don’t want to, or maybe no one is motivated enough to do it. But it’s been seven years, no one else is doing it, and I get the feeling that no one else is going to.
Flying Lotus, Migos, Shabazz Palaces, Waka Flocka Flame, Explosions in the Sky, Run the Jewels, Brian Eno, Julian Casablancas, DOOM, Jay Electronica, Thundercat, Knxwledge, Oddisee, Wavves, Washed Out and many more are all slated to participate in the singles compilations. Earlier this year, Adult Swim also released a “dream pop”-based compilation called LUXE, featuring new material from Neon Indian, Toro Y Moi, The Mountain Goats, and others.
When it come’s to booking artists for the series and getting them to contribute original tracks DeMarco has said there has been mixed reactions over the years.
It usually goes one of two ways: “Who the hell is Adult Swim and why should I do this?” or “I love Adult Swim!” There’s really no in between. So usually the artist is down, but it’s more about convincing the label and the publisher that there’s value in giving away something for free that their entire existence is based on monetizing.
The first single in this year’s series is a new track from the veteran Atlanta rap producer, Zaytoven, titled “Pose To.” The track features appearances from Chicago speed-rap king Twista, Atlanta chirper Yung LA, and the late Bankroll Fresh.
photo credit Raymond Flotat
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