the death of the album

also look how backward looking things like these Q mag top 100 albums ever lists are. even when compared to 5 years ago.

filler: the stuff between the good singles on albums by artists like Britney, NSync, etc.

Some already have -- I think this is what Blount was getting at. Most notably, perhaps, Ben Folds released a series of three EPs that were only available via iTunes.

Why, didn't you see that iTunes spot with Wynton Marsalis?

I find myself in this bizzare generational midpoint, and I'm sure I'm not the only one around here. My younger sister can't live without her iPod Mini and downloads daily, my older cousins still bang 8-tracks (!) when they feel nostalgic. I connect my laptop to my stereo when I want to hear the new O.V. Wright tune at SoulSides, and I've bought more vinyl than MP3s this year.

So maybe its just a consequence of my weird position, but I feel like the album and the downloadable-MP3-single can coexist peacefully. Sure MP3s will eventually hold the majority of the public's interest, but who's to say the album won't turn into a niche market like vinyl today?

Musicians still release albums because a) they make the most money that way (1 song = $0.085 songwriting income, 1 album = $1.02 songwriting income, even if it was only bought for 1 song) and b) all music industry agreements are still focused around the album. Partially because, I bets, songs seem disposable and albums seem Important.

10.0m units TW (+8%, -7%)
9.2m units LW
222.4m units YTD (-3%)

10.7m units same week last year
228.2m units YTD last year

not entirely "over"

Of course, this is using the live band model, there's a much smaller marginal difference in time for hip-hop and dance to record songs v. albums, which probably explains why those genres are more likely to release singles.

But albums matter even to dance and hip-hop artists, still.

They're not dead.

Since music has always been (for most) an impulse buy, I think the method that people actually get their music will be very different for our kids' kids.

I am *definitely* in this camp. up to now I've been pretty obsessed with the album format.

Someone sounds like Chicken Little here. Music becoming instinct? Will. Not. Happen.

I think the argument being made is that while album sales are currently robust, once those people who have grown up with the album as the dominant form of musical consumption die off/stop buying music, they will be replaced by kids such as the ones being put forth here who who no particular concerns for albums and only relate to music as downloads/songs.

I don't necessarily believe this, either... but I think that some of the consequences aren't that negative.
a) A return to the single format, even if it is 'digital' and not a piece of wax, isn't a bad thing.
b) Most people I know still listen to full albums, but are concerned more with the way the songs sound individually than the scope of the album as a whole. Thus, friends were confused when I called Movements a good album, but that's because I'd been listening to it as an album. The more I listened, the more I honed in on individual tracks and realized the weakness of a number of them.
c) No way people will stop buying music they haven't heard. Period.

Maybe artists will change their name between each group of recordings. It's not as if, with the internet, people won't know that the same (or similar) group of people is involved in each incarnation, but at least it breaks up the ID3 tags a bit more.

Another issue is the "that album really grew on me" problem. Also known as the "is it filler or is it good for me?" question. If albums go away, how do you get people to listen to music a couple times. Napster is trying to address this with their free music program, where you can listen to any track in their catalog up to five times before you pay. Some combination of a subscription service and album download service may get this right eventually.

This all ties into the "mixtape culture" of MP3s, blogs etc. People want to have a sense of individual identity without actually being creative. With albums, you were able to sort-of tie yourself to an artist and show, through your purchase, that you were into more than just their mass-market singles - you GOT them, and others who GOT them sort-of GOT you. Now, the LAST thing you want is to aggregate the same list of disparate media objects as someone else. Maybe the middle ground is individual artist subsciptions, where you can feel like you are connected in some way to the artist (and also helping support them financially), but that you don't have to play their music in any particular order, or buy into their self-created arc, etc.

xpost - I think "instinct" was supposed to read "extinct," right?

the seven most important words of this thread.

It's possible that the powerful immersive effect of the album experience is stronger than the override effects of any potential format restictions anyway. For the personal adventure, cherry picking singles and catchy tunes for a compilation doesn't have the same effect. You need to lose youself in someone's strange little world. The style of thinking that says, 'Hey, most albums only have 2-3 good songs and the rest is filler' is somewhat alien to this approach - it's like the argument Reader's Digest uses when they concertina a Dickens novel or something. It's the fast food, quick hit argument. There is a place for that - at parties and in the car, or for a mixtape your new girlfriend/boyfriend etc. It definitely has its place. I would not describe that approach as immersive or mood oriented, as the album experience tends to be. It's a different experience, for a different context, and therefore elides easy comparison.

So, if you have bands & acts going into studios to record singles instead of albums, the process undergoes something of a change - think about Metallica & Ja Rule recording that awful "Yeah, We Did It" song in Some Kind of Monster, everybody burning up a lot of studio money on something nobody liked (ok nobody I know, but that song is so poor I can't imagine anybody liking it): that scenario is more likely to replay itself, I'd think, if people are taking a song into the studio and thinking "this one is the single."

But when serious teenage fandom emerges, it tends to be rather completist -- the teenage fan is well aware that there are a million musical artists out there that he/she could listen to, but the fandom is based on strong sudden affiliation with one of them. And that means listening to the album even for the filler, even at the expense of listening to other things (there are no other things, this is the first good thing they've fallen in love with!), and so on. I don't really think that's changed about teenagers. As they get older and start consuming more, there's more of a question, maybe, of whether album-orientation will stick.

But right, what has changed is that the portion of the public who would previously have just listened to the radio can now put money into the music-economy in order to listen to "their" radio, single songs enjoyed, etc. And that can shift things around a bit.

Indeed. The UK albums chart is full of bands/artists bought by a lot of older people these days. Theres a thread on it somewhere.
The singles chart is nothing like that. I don't know many adults who even buy chart cd singles now.
Is it the same elsewhere?

But everyone here seems to be operating under the assumption that there was a point in time when the singles charts and album charts overlapped to a much higher degree. I think that's a faulty assumption, but I don't know.

If people in their late 20s count as "older people", yes, indeed. At least here in Norway.

My thoughts exactly.

I'd love to see the iPod and the opportunity to buy single songs as data files vanish though. :)

hey, i'm sitting here at my computer with GB upon GB of music on it, while looking at my giant shelving unit o' CDs in the other room, none of which have been touched in months. i'm just keeping them for sentimental value it seems. the day i brought the CD binder in from the car was the day it started officially collecting dust.

i think this sort of argument happens every time a new form of technology pops up.

music has always been a commodity; as long as you're buying and selling and the artist is getting famous and possibly rich off his or her art, it's a commodity. what difference does it make whether it's a record, a tape, a CD or an mp3? buying something is buying something. not that there's anything wrong with that, per se - but it's kind of naive to think that the new technology and the ipod age have brought about a newfound superficiality about music. i think your average pop fan in 1976 had the same appreciation and level of understanding and knowledge as your average pop fan in 2006 does - they like the singles, they like the popular artist, and that's about it.

that will never hold true for a record hound/music fan, though. i don't think your average ILMer or blogger or dude who hangs out at the record store every week, or even just your casual, non-foaming at the mouth music fan is going to stop caring about albums as a whole. sure, we're a minority, but we've always been a minority. and we're a powerful minority, because we have nothing better to do than own thousands of albums, and we're well-educated and hold jobs and can purchase stuff, and have a mind to spend most of our money on music. how else does one explain the existence of indie labels?

i guess what i'm saying is that from the beginning of people creating album meant to be listened to as a whole - which was only in the late 50's - it's always been a relatively small niche that's really paid attention to the artistry and flow and meaning of 10 or 12 songs arranged in some sort of order and presented as such. no one else actually gives a shit, and never has.

which is a whole other argument - the glory of singles vs. the artistry of a whole album - and there are undoubtedly whole threads devoted to it. :-)

Well im talking about people 40-70 who seem to be buying lots of music now. My parents by loads since they got ipods. They also like to play music in the car. Some of it is from Asda some is from Amazon. They've probably never been in an actual record dhop in their lives. But nowadays you dont have to. Its just so easy to buy.
But todays kids who are buying singles on itunes might just grow up and buy albums from itunes once they have the money from working. We will just have to wait and see.

Doesn't matter how they purchase music as long as they enjoy it.

I would HATE to see airplay taken into account. It should be sales and sales ONLY. At least that way its much harder for labels to buy chart placings.

It is interesting though how many people on ILM say they don't listen to or buy albums now. Unusual for music fans. So perhaps there has been a change.

Compilations and greatest hits every few years might become even more of the norm in future.

I wonder how much the Now Thats What I Call Music cds sell now. I suspect they sell more than anything else still.

CDs aren't dead. Not even close. Hell, vinyl pressings are up!

Compilations are the opposite of dying... especially cheap samplers. Sessions, much like K-Tel in the late 90s, revamped and put out a large series of excellent compilations in the past 2-3 years, even though the art on those Sessions double-CDs is finally catching up to Atari 2600 cartridge art aesthetic.

iTunes and other download sites are still an upstart peripheral source of income, but at least doing well enough to show promise.

It does seem like with every step away from the physical object (and CDs were less physical than vinyl) the sequence of an album becomes less important. Vinyl and tape sort of forced you to listen in a certain way.

its dead.

i want EPs to be the new format.

i havent got time to listen to more than that really these days.

theres too much music i want to listen to (rightly or wrongly) from podcasts to radio rips to old albums to new ones, i dont have time to listen to overlong 50 minute hodge podges anymore. i do wonder how much i might like more if i gave it more of a chance but you can usually tell if youre going to like something and it seems most artists (in the genres i like at least) either are unable to sustain their ideas for a whole album or just arent directing their energies into that anymore.

I don't think it's anything to do with not having the time. I listen to music for 50 minutes straight every day, but almost never to an album simply because with today's technology I can skip around choice cuts at random instead, which I find a much more satisfying experience. Albums only exist because that was the best 60s technology could do anyway - it stopped you having to get up and replace the needle every three minutes

(also she thought the CD cover of Black Sabbath's "Master of Reality" was "very uncreative")
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier)

maybe you need to get her darnielle's book on MoR for christmas!

The real lesson here is the fragmentation of the market. We all want to have it in different ways. So that has to be provided for, for the sake of sales.

Monitoring it all will prove to be a bitch, yet when have they even gotten it right in the past?

"Prompted by a recent visit with my friend's 14 yo daughter"

http://www.forumammo.com/cpg/albums/userpics/10062/6s8xykk.gif