The Dream Theater release cycle
With Distance over Time finally revealed and the hype machine starting to whir, I’m seeing a lot of people speculating about when to expect the tracklist and when the first single might land.
There are a lot of vague rules of thumb (“the promo cycle takes about three months, right?”), but I thought the best way to get a sense of what we might expect would be to lay it all out.
All Dream Theater release cycles, 2007 onwards
A note on the dataset - anything from Octavarium-or-before has been omitted deliberately. A few reasons for this:
Systematic Chaos was the first album to be released with the full-throated support of a record label. Atlantic, notoriously, never gave Dream Theater much support through the noughties. They put the albums out, they took the money, and they let it happen. Systematic Chaos was a watershed moment!
Systematic Chaos was also the first album to be released in the “digital age.” Octavarium and Train of Thought had radio promos (As I Am, These Walls, Panic Attack), and a lot of the earlier albums had physical singles, but the format of Facebook press releases and streaming YouTube videos is still reasonably new. Systematic Chaos was the first album to receive what I would describe as a modern release strategy.
The further back you go, the harder it is to find reliable data! A lot of press releases have been taken down as websites have been redesigned - I’ve had to make extensive use of the WayBack machine, helped by Google Trends. (When did people first start searching “Black Clouds & Silver Linings?”) I also appreciate that dates may vary depending on the time zone of the host website or the press release, so give or take a day on either side. I’m sure I could find dates for some of the pre-Systematic Chaos releases, but probably not all of them, so SC felt like a sensible place to draw the line.
So - that’s the data. What can we learn?
The length of a promo cycle
First off, I was surprised to discover that actually, when you lay out the numbers, the classic estimate of three months for a promo cycle is a little on the low side. A Dramatic Turn of Events was promoted for dead on three months (8th June to 12th July), and The Astonishing was a little on the shorter side (3rd November to 29th January, although that doesn’t include some of the Empire vs. Ravenskill viral marketing). In general, though, you should add a couple of weeks to your three months.
Distance over Time feels like it’s been in the pipeline for a long time already, and February still feels like a long way away - but that’s probably because they ran the augmented reality game for three months. In reality, the DoT promo cycle is quite a typical length, from title to release.
Tracklist
The tracklist is probably the thing that feels “overdue.” John revealed a couple of titles in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, but we’re still without a full tracklisting. (The titles announced so far, in case you missed them: Fall into the Light, Paralyzed, At Wit’s End - and, er, Barstool Warrior!)
It’s unusual that the tracks weren’t accompanied by the cover art (all albums but Systematic Chaos), but more often than not titles arrive a couple of weeks into the promotional schedule. Systematic Chaos didn’t reveal track names for a fortnight after the announcement, and they held off a full month with their self titled album, so there’s not yet any evidence they’re doing anything unusual with the new record.
At the time of writing, it’s been twelve days since Distance over Time was officially revealed (I’m excluding the ARG preview from my timeline!), so if the track names were revealed tomorrow we’d be more-or-less in line with the Systematic Chaos promo cycle. If it’s more like the self-titled album, though, it could still be a couple of weeks yet - so early December or so.
I wouldn’t expect it to take much longer than a month - but then, I wouldn’t have expected it to take much longer than two weeks in 2013, so do always keep in mind that unexpected things happen!
First single
So, there were two very early debut singles:
The Gift of Music, 3rd December 2015, exactly a month after The Astonishing’s title reveal.
On the Backs of Angels, 29th June 2011, three weeks after A Dramatic Turn of Events’s title reveal.
Outside of that, pre-release singles usually take the best part of two months to “bake.” That’d take us to somewhen around the first week of January 2019.
Although two months is the more common single release window, there are some good reasons to believe it might only be a month this time around:
First off - there was no significant marketing activity for The Astonishing between 3rd December 2015 and 22nd January 2016, perhaps they were trying to avoid doing anything interesting near Christmas, where it might get lost in the festive fog? If so, Distance over Time will also be crossing Christmas, so they might want to get a single out sooner rather than later.
Secondly, two of the three most recent albums released a single within a month, so it’s the more common strategy this decade. Plus, they haven’t released the tracklisting yet, which is a bit of a weak announcement on its own, so maybe they’d release the single and the tracklisting alongside each other to make a bigger stir? (Perhaps along with pre-order details?)
These are all fairly trivial arguments in favour of December - bottom line is, the lead single usually takes about two months, probably best to expect it to materialise in around two months, so some time in the new year. But early December wouldn’t be entirely unexpected, either.
A second single?
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, here - but four of the last five albums have released multiple singles ahead of the street date.
Systematic Chaos: 2 singles (Constant Motion, The Dark Eternal Night)
Black Clouds & Silver Linings: 6 singles (A Rite of Passage, Stargazer, Odyssey, Tenement Funster / Flick of the Wrist / Lily of the Valley, Take Your Fingers from My Hair, Larks Tongues in Aspic, Part II)
Dream Theater: 2 singles (The Enemy Inside, Along for the Ride)
The Astonishing: 2 singles (The Gift of Music, Moment of Betrayal)
I’m being a bit loose with the definition of a “single,” here. These range from full iTunes releases to underappreciated in-studio videos, although The Gift of Music decided to go with a NOMAC blooper reel, controversially. I’ve also included the Uncovered 2009 tracks from Black Clouds & Silver Linings. We can debate what’s a single and what’s not all day long - but more often than not, we do hear more than just the one track ahead of time.
Moment of Betrayal and Along for the Ride were released within a week or two of their respective albums; The Dark Eternal Night almost a month ahead. (TDEN 10th May, Systematic Chaos 4th June.) Black Clouds was a bit of an exception as it had so many tracks to get through, but as a general rule, a second single comes within a month of release.
In short
The main thing that this tells us it that there’s a lot of uncertainty in Dream Theater’s promotional schedule! They usually change their strategy at least a little bit with each album, and now that they’re on InsideOut, their new label might have different ideas about how to promote a record.
But if we are going to take history as a guideline, our safest bet would be…
Full tracklist by early December 2018.
First single in early January 2019 (or maybe early December 2018 if they want something out before Christmas)
Second single in early to mid February.
Happy waiting!
Update - 4th December 2018
Dream Theater have officially announced the tracklist for Distance over Time - and my estimate is holding up pretty well! The updated chart is as follows:
So far, Distance over Time compares well to the last three albums..
A word of caution: since the tracks were leaked through Amazon, announcing the tracks today might not have been part of the release strategy, and might not be the plan going forward. We might have lucked out. Then again, maybe a month is about as long as a label can practically keep the online retailers quiet in this day and age!
Update - 7th December 2018
It’s actually only 6th December where I am right now, but… it’s out! Untethered Angel seems to be landing at midnight on the morning of the 7th, which is not unexpected at all, and matches The Astonishing cycle nicely. It’s been a good week for data!