Despite three very publicized listening parties, Kanye West’s DONDA wasn’t a certainty until two days after the final event in Chicago last month. Drake recently gave fans a week’s heads-up for Certified Lover Boy; the same went for Tyler, the Creator's Call Me If You Get Lost and Doja Cat's Planet Her. Skip back a year or two to count James Blake’s Assume Form, Quavo’s Quavo Huncho, and Logic’s No Pressure, or all the way back to 2013 when Beyoncé’s self-titled fifth album landed as a complete surprise.

So why are acts — particularly in the worlds of hip-hop, R&B, and electronic music — towing to a trend that doesn’t look to be waning any time soon? And what impact is it having? One thing is broadly agreed on: in a world of diminishing attention spans where people remain thirsty for instant digital gratification, the strategy duly feeds it. And globalized acts aren’t seeing lighter wallets as a result.

Cherie Hu, a researcher who heads up the music business newsletter Water & Music and works as an Adjunct Professor at New York University, says the rise of short-lead releases largely comes down to the attention economy.

“Back when physical sales were the primary way the music industry made money, everything led up to the album release. That was the big moment. Now the album is just the beginning of the conversation,” says Hu.

Hu agrees that mixtape culture is a contributor to the short-lead movement. “Hip-hop artists were earlier than rock artists to embrace digital audio workstations and remote collaboration, which has allowed them to work more quickly online and be comfortable in that fully digital environment."