Plans have been announced to create a global release day for albums and singles to try and combat piracy. This would mean that instead of albums being released on a Monday as is currently the norm in the UK, they would instead be released on a Friday to fall into line with countries such Ireland and Germany.

This makes perfect sense. The reason a lot of new releases are shared online prior to their domestic release date is that they are already available in other territories and let’s face it, no one wants to wait an extra couple of days when they could have something now!

The proposed change will be great for the music industry. The encouraged decrease in piracy would ultimately mean more money being injected into new artists and would hopefully create more diversity and quality on the scene.

Frances Moore of the IFPI has said: "A global release day makes sense. We view this as a tremendous opportunity to breathe new life back into the release of music.

"Friday has a compelling logic to it, at the start of the weekend when fans most want to listen to and buy music, which is why it has been chosen as the day."

With the rise of streaming services such as Spotify, it makes perfect sense that the music industry would want to do something that would improve sales, which have been steadily in recent years. The industry still makes money from streaming services and streaming figures already count towards a single’s chart position and this will soon be true for albums too but nothing looks quite as good as physical sales figures, whether this be in physical CDs or digitally.

A sad reality of a change in music release dates is the negative impact it will have on traditional Sunday night chart shows. Many adults will fondly recall memories of listening to the radio to find out who was number one. Those of a certain age will also recall listening to the whole show with a tape recorder, trying to stop recording before the DJ interrupted your perfect chart tape. All of this became a Sunday night tradition but to keep in line with the new release dates, the chart show will either have to change its day, most likely to a Thursday, or the Sunday slot would stay and be more of a chart update rather than reflecting the official final figures.

The change in release day can only be a good thing for the music industry but the change will be bitter sweet for those who still religiously tune in to the Sunday evening chart, however decreased that number may be.