Is Beyoncé's "Renaissance" Rollout (Gasp!) Conventional?

The singer, who favored innovation over commercial dominance, opted for a more standard playbook ahead of her seventh solo album, "Renaissance," which will be released on Friday.

An upbeat debut single ready for radio. An album title and release date with plenty of notice. A magazine cover, followed by a personal mission statement, new social media account, detailed track list and presale merchandise.

For most musicians, these are age-old chips in the playbook for the introduction of a major new album. But for Beyoncé, who has spent the past decade-plus upending all conventions of how to market music, the rollout of “Renaissance,” her latest album due out Friday, is a stark change — and perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that the game has changed.

Before "Renaissance," Beyoncé's seventh solo studio album, the last time the singer participated in such baby steps, with "4" in 2011, President Barack Obama was still in his first term and a European music startup called Spotify had just arrived in the United States. Since then, there hasn't been much on the new music sales formula that Beyoncé hasn't tweaked, disrupted, or completely dismantled.

First there was "Beyoncé", 2013's surprise paradigm shifting "visual album". Then came "Lemonade" (2016), a hint-filled tour de force that arrived with more mystery as a movie on cable TV. By partnering closely with Tidal, the streaming service then controlled by her husband, Jay-Z, and with media giants like HBO, Disney and Netflix, Beyoncé positioned one ambitious multimedia project after another as something to carefully researched and considered, rather than served for easy access and maximum consumption.

This work, and the innovative way in which she published it, helped Beyoncé to soar in artistic stature. Yet it also served to distance the singer somewhat from the pop music mainstream, siloing her material — the 'Lemonade' album didn't become widely available on major streaming platforms until three years after its initial release. , while her full movie is currently only available on Tidal - and potentially crippling her commercial performance.

Beyoncé's latest #1 single as lead artist, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", came at the end of 2008. Despite the fact that her 28 Grammy Awards made her the most successful woman in music, she did not win a trophy in a major category since 2010. Radio airplay of his new solo releases has dropped significantly since "4". And while his six solo albums all went to No. 1, in-between projects like "Everything Is Love" (a surprise joint album with Jay-Z), the "Lion King" soundtrack and his concert album "Homecoming have each failed to make it to the top.

Yet Beyoncé's paradox meant that even though she slipped down the charts somewhat, her more great cultural prestige has remained supreme, driven by the mystique and grandeur it brings to every project. ("My success can't be quantified," she rapped on "Nice," from 2018, poking fun at the importance of "streaming numbers.")

"She is still the leader of the...