Apple release day issue resolved

UPDATE:

The Industry Observer has amended this story to include new information from ARIA.

Almost four months since Apple rectified its issue of releasing music early in nine territories, thus affecting albums and singles and the ARIA chart, Apple has quietly fixed another issue.

The Industry Observer has gained access to an email sent by local recording industry body ARIA to its members to update them on the change.

“The problem related to timings based on non-Australian time zones, and the early availability of products to their official release date,” read the email, sent last week.

Contrary to TIO's initial story, ARIA has advised that the problem of ‘early releases’ has not been ongoing for four months, but was addressed by Apple last November.

The recent issue arose from a time change in the US (ie. the West Coast moving from standard to daylight saving time) and, once again, has been promptly addressed and rectified.

In November last year, ARIA alerted its members to the separate issue noting Apple changed their release schedule as a result of introducing regional hubs instead of country by country release schedules.

The issue affected the following regional hubs:

•         Oceania
•         Europe
•         Asia
•         Africa
•         Caribbean
•         Russia
•         India
•         Turkey
•         Middle East

Global Release Day was introduced in July 2015 to ensure music releases are made uniformly available around the world on Fridays at midnight local time.

Apple’s plans to align its release schedule with the most eastern time zone in the nine regions meant some sales and pre-orders were processed on the Thursday instead. If a label didn’t manage its release date through Apple to accommodate the issue, those sales diluted the ‘release week’ success of a product as sales were reported before the product was officially released.

Thankfully, all is once again well in music industry land.

The email sent last week to ARIA members states:

“Apple has informed us they have been able to rectify the problem and, effective immediately, releases will not be made prior to official release dates.”