Is the album dead? US album sales slump

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/02/is-music-album-dead-us-worst-ever-sales-figures

"The album is dying in front of our very eyes," industry commentator Bob Lefsetz wrote. "Everybody's interested in the single, and no one's got time to sit and hear your hour-plus statement."

Somewhere steve m is chuckling away to himself

Lefsetz is a putz.

Analysts blame Spotify, YouTube and other cheap or free streaming services for broad declines that include a 4% drop in digital downloads – the first since Apple's iTunes was launched a decade ago. Despite opposition to Spotify from songwriters, who say streaming services pay so poorly they threaten what remains of a meagre living, streaming now contributes 16% of the industry's revenues.

Album sales, analysts say, are further threatened by fragmenting of genres, the poor quality of music and shopping chains carrying a limited selection of discounted releases to bring in customers.

so that's why they changed the rules to specialist charts ? so to make sure the superstars sell more at the expense of niche acts.

About fucking time

" It seems that the 10-song, artist-statement format that originated with the advent of the 33⅓ long player in the late 1940s could itself be nearing the end of the line."

when in the last thirty years since the CD arrived have albums been 10-song artist statements?

But it's still to be seen whether streaming can ever be as a profitable as albums. "You just don't know," said Christman. "It's like asking how big the universe is. Right now it's a small universe."

Deep.

Ed Christman, of the industry publication Billboard, said there was no definitive data to show streaming was cannibalising traditional sales, but added that in terms of revenue it took 2,000 streams to equal one album.

He said: "Is the album going away? People have been speculating about that forever. There are those that think the album should go away and plenty of artists who still believe in the album." If albums are still selling 300m copies, it's unlikely to be abandoned. "It's up to the artists to decide what happens to it."

One school of thought holds that the decline of the album is related to the introduction of the CD. Musicians were able to put out 80 minutes of music – far more than the LP, limited to 21 minutes a side – making for often self-indulgent releases. Others argue that music released in physical form should be abandoned. But as other media have discovered, physical formats still command a premium in both value and prestige.

amazon's download price per song in germany right now is 1€29, an increase of 30%. no wonder digital downloads are going down.

so that's why they changed the rules to specialist charts ? so to make sure the superstars sell more at the expense of niche acts.

Basically

i think that may be assuming too much

http://whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/what-if-record-business-survived-but.html

was Elton, say even 10 years back, still a big selling album artist in the States? i find that hard to imagine tbh.

the album isn't dying unless you use some really narrow definition of what constitutes an album or have silly idealistic ideas about how or why they're made. if the album is dying then what's replacing it? if the answer is nothing, then what's actually dying is the entire record industry.

wait what? What does that even mean?

Like, the album is dying inasmuch as album sales have been more-or-less consistently dropping for a decade and now are at about 40% of their peak. How does that require "some narrow definition of what constitutes an album"? I would say that's based on a pretty broad definition of what constitutes an album.

well, I think some of those commentators are conflating two separate things: the long playing package of songs, and the idea of "the album" as some kind of grand unified statement. the latter was mostly bs anyway and only existed for a short period of time. but the LP just as a format is still the driving force of the entire industry. are there even any major artists who don't release albums?

it just seems a little bit like looking at bad box office returns and saying "welp, people just want youtube videos now, so the feature length film must be dying. shorts are the new thing."

obviously the whole industry of recorded music is dying, but as long as it still exists in some form, I can't see the album dying because it will always sell for more money than a single. and the best way to make a great single is probably to make a bunch of good songs and see which is best. and it's way more efficient to record, market, and tour for a whole collection of songs rather than just a single or two. unless we're going to go back to the old package tours of the '50s where a bunch of artists would tour together and each only play a few songs. or we could go back to artists playing their one hit single and a padding out the rest of their set with other hits of the day, but I don't see that happening. I think it's rare that anyone even takes an artist seriously if they only have one song. they want to know when the album is coming.

"Album sales, analysts say, are further threatened by fragmenting of genres, the poor quality of music and shopping chains carrying a limited selection of discounted releases to bring in customers."

what stands out here is this weird phrase "the poor quality of music"- what does this author mean by this phrase? that the quality of new music being made has dropped? or that there are too many releases and that the (mystically vague) quality level of the *average* album within that oversaturated market place is now lower than it was, say, twenty years ago? it's a mysterious little moment in a mostly all too straightforward and depressing article

i kind of feel like the album/single duality is kind of the essence of popular music in a way that can never die. artists are always going to make a whole mess of songs, and there are always going to be some listeners that want entire collections of their songs and other listeners that just want the one or two most popular songs. that doesn't seem like it will ever change; at most what will change is the increasing tendency to do shorter EP-like releases or a monthly or weekly series of songs instead of dumping out an hour's worth of music at once every time.

stuff like this just strikes me as not that different from if people pointed to the rise of short YouTube videos and said "people don't want 2 hour movies anymore! everything needs to be under 5 minutes! no longform narrative works will ever be popular again!"

Any article that chooses Lefsetz as its expert voice can go fuck itself tbf

stuff like this just strikes me as not that different from if people pointed to the rise of short YouTube videos and said "people don't want 2 hour movies anymore! everything needs to be under 5 minutes! no longform narrative works will ever be popular again!"

yeah, and even if that were somehow true, it's not like it's just a different format or somehow up to the consumer. it would be an entirely different business! there's no way that existing movie studios, directors, actors, etc. could just switch to making shorter things more frequently and letting people pay a fraction of the price for it.

DL you didn't write it then? ;)

Chris Molanphy has written some good pieces about how the music industry has tried over the years to keep people from being able to buy singles to inflate album sales, and how in the iTunes era we're just kinda seeing the aftermath of that war having been completely lost: http://www.idolator.com/400826/once-more-with-loathing-are-labels-moving-to-kill-the-single-again

that's a good article (the idolator one, that is). one thing it doesn't mention is that in the '90s, when labels were routinely deleting singles at the peak of their popularity (he cites a couple examples, but every label was doing it), it wasn't just singles fans who were missing out. record stores hated the strategy, and complained loudly about it, because singles -- cd singles, cassingles, all that stuff -- were huge and steady sellers (and probably had really good profit margins, too). there's not a lot of businesses where wholesalers could get away with steadfastly refusing to accommodate their best retailers.

Any thought given to the depreciated attention span of the listening collective? I suspect that much of the current common reaction to record albums is equivalent to "too long, didn't read."

i taught a class full of 18-21-yr-olds who collectively did not much listen to entire albums; one of them had almost literally never heard an entire album, just skimmed through them, even through tracks, to find good spots, and had a conversion experience during the course because she found out that it was awesome to listen to albums

On the "declining quality of music" point, while that's obvious nonsense, I do think there are probably fewer avenues for the promotion of "album music" (i.e. the kind of music that focuses on the quality of an entire album as a "work" rather than on singles) today with the consolidation of radio, the decline of MTV (and its sister channels) as an actual music outlet, etc. Of course the run of the popular music album as a unified "work" has had a relatively short timespan.

i knew people in the CD era who didn't know what songs in their own collections sounded like because they usually skipped forward to favorite tracks. i'm sure some people like that, but not as many, existed in the vinyl era, and far more exist now, but the bottom line is that tendency has always existed, and the technology has just enabled it more and more.

I'd actually be quite excited if short films were more dominant than feature length films. I think most films feel too padded out (I have seen a few 3-4 hour films I love but that is rare). Short films can be very potent but I guess they can also be too long. Lots of people complain of bloated novels too and a need for more stripped down novellas.

yeah i think preferring short works is fine and doesn't necessarily denote a 'short attention span' -- in fact one of the side effects i enjoy about the way things are now is, as i said, EPs are more common and, because people are no longer giddy to fill 79 minutes of a compact disc and/or aren't waiting around 2+ years between projects, we're getting shorter albums that feel more digestible and judiciously edited.

i knew people in the CD era who didn't know what songs in their own collections sounded like because they usually skipped forward to favorite tracks. i'm sure some people like that, but not as many, existed in the vinyl era, and far more exist now, but the bottom line is that tendency has always existed, and the technology has just enabled it more and more.

― some dude, Saturday, November 2, 2013 8:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't really understand why this is "the bottom line." You could just as easily say "The tendency has always existed to some degree, but the bottom line is that the technology has enabled it more and more"

For some reason when talking about music on the internet, people get really emotionally invested in the idea that nothing ever actually changes.

"bottom line" is a figure of speech; he could have said "the fact is" too

yeah i think i actually didn't have 'the bottom line' in that sentence at all when i first wrote it and then threw it in there for some stupid reason

I do think there are probably fewer avenues for the promotion of "album music" (i.e. the kind of music that focuses on the quality of an entire album as a "work" rather than on singles) today with the consolidation of radio, the decline of MTV (and its sister channels) as an actual music outlet, etc.

wait, mtv was a champion of "an entire album as a work rather than singles"? that sounds like slightly revisionist history to me. (and i'm a big fan of mtv.)

and what avenues besides seventies FM radio would have played an entire album? I'm not familiar with other venues.

the increasing tendency to do shorter EP-like releases or a monthly or weekly series of songs instead of dumping out an hour's worth of music at once every time.
― some dude, Saturday, November 2, 2013 6:12 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Today's EPs are more often than not the same length as old albums

there feels like kind of an unstated but palpable divide between artists who are considered 'album oriented' or not -- like Flo Rida, no matter how long he hangs around on the charts, will never be looked at that way. his last album had four huge top 10 singles that combined sold 9 million copies, but the album itself didn't get halfway to gold. xp

xp not really saying that they would play entire albums, but they would play more *album artists*.

I found an empty CD rack (fits ~200?) in my basement this afternoon under a huge box, it was covered in dust and looked like a relic from some forgotten time.

I'll take it.

I know this would be really hard to quantify, but I'm really curious what the actual economic effects of all these things are. The strong suggestion is that fewer people are able to make a living making music, but I don't know if that's "fewer" in absolute numbers, as a percentage of the total number of people trying to do it (which seems like it may actually be higher than ever, though that's hard to measure too), or some other metric entirely. I know a lot of musicians, a few of whom have managed to mostly make their living making music, some of whom have maybe tried or managed that for a few years and then quit, many others who have only really done it for fun, and I have no idea if those percentages are different now than a generation ago.

My guess is that indeed there are fewer full-time working musicians than maybe a generation ago, but that's really based on my correlative experience in print media, which has been affected by a lot of the same things that have affected music. There are definitely fewer full-time newspaper reporters in America now than there were 25 years ago, so probably the same holds true for musicians. But has anyone actually tried to measure that?

boomers are dying too, after which there'll be a brief lull in the death of musicians.

i can remember when rolling stone did their best albums of the 80s issue in 89 their big think piece writeup saying that albums didn't really matter anymore, that albums were just collections of singles now be it bitusa, joshua tree, or purple rain. there was probably a point about the blockbuster model that could've been made w/ a more analytical less sentimental eye but the jist of it was that rock (in the rrhof definition of the word ie all 'worthy' pop) had been cheapened somehow. i can also remember it singling out the 80s as the first decade (w/ an understood since the 50s, since rock, since music mattered) where pop had had no paradigm shift had occurred, no major new styles or sounds had emerged. yknow the decade that gave us hip-hop and techno.

I would also guess that there are almost certainly fewer working (i.e. primary income from music) musicians than a few decades ago, and some of that is almost certainly from reduced recording sales. However the advent of the DJ and the rise of electronic programming have also greatly reduced the demand for working musicians (no need for live bands at dance clubs or weddings, far reduced demand for studio musicians, etc.) (not trying to imply that the DJ or programmer isn't a musician, but it's still one dude replacing 3 or 5 or 15 dudes).

ipod/itunes is just a more convenient listening apparatus for most people. Probably plenty of music enthisiasts exist now because of this delivery system... people who would never purchase an Album or w/e

xpost That's true, "working musicians" in raw numbers has always meant primarily hired hands and bands -- bars, clubs, symphonies, studio work, whatever. So I guess the real question, at least in regard to changes in the recorded-music marketplace, is whether there are fewer people making money from the sale of recorded music. Or maybe there are more people making some money, because it's so easy to record and distribute, but fewer people making a living?

i could imagine that where the decimation of music industry jobs has happened has been w/ studio musicians and that general infrastructure, w/ technology possibly a bigger factor than obv economic pressures (cf industrial jobs). thinking that even here it wouldn't approach the job loss among suits, in pr, etc and even here w/ the internet a definite culprit/hero that it doesn't begin to compare to the role that mergers have played. thinkpieces always want to point to indie rock musicians as the victims, like they're the artistic equivalent of a cute furry endangered species, but i've always thought the internet has had a positive or at worst (or best depending on perspective) an ambiguous effect on the livelihood of indie rock musicians. the pre-'fall on me' rem albums took years to sell what the new arcade fire sold in a week, and that was w/ considerably more monoculture media support (at a time when the monoculture really existed) and effectively major label promotional muscle for rem. let's not even start to compare say grizzly bear and husker du's relative standards of living.

its the norm for myself.

I keep thinking about wk's remark upthread

thanks, it makes me crazy how people completely disregard the economic realities of it all. whether you're releasing a single or an album, there are some fixed costs that are the same for both, like pr and marketing most importantly but also other things like artwork.

so lets say most artists throughout history have only had maybe 4 single-worthy tracks at best on an album. the two options are...

- release those 4 songs + whatever else to make it a full album and spend $X on promotion, artwork, videos, etc.
- release 4 singles throughout the year but only spend $X/4 on each.

the album route is better for the artists because it's more efficient and it's better for fans because they get more tracks, some of which may be good.

― wk, Monday, November 4, 2013 6:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also if you're paying for studio time it makes no sense to come in, spend 2 hours setting up, getting the drums and everything mic'd, then do one song and say, OK see you soon!

unless you have your own studio and everything is set up and mic'd all the time (and/or everything is just a detailed pro tools template), which is not all that hard to do these days.

yes thanks pro tools i'm aware of that, but some people want to go to a studio and there are a lot of people that don't have living situations where they can track live drums and loud rock instruments.

"I feel like "Lady Gaga releases first single from highly anticipated new album" is going to remain a more buzzworthy angle than "Lady Gaga releases standalone single" for the forseeable future."

is it, though? maybe if the standalone single came after a couple promo singles and failed singles and umpteenth SoundCloud tries, without much return on pageview investment (this varies per artist, and it's often not who you'd respect; my biggest pageview hit for a track post was a fucking Chili Peppers song). a good example of this is Azealia Banks -- at this point "Azealia Banks releases new single" is just not as compelling as it was unless there is an outside hook. or, for that matter, those few tracks Gaga released before the album cycle started in earnest. (Gaga is a weird example because her Backplane thing sort of bypasses the need for blog coverage, but you get the idea.)

oh god respect==>expect. I swear that was not on purpose

also in 2012 there were 316 million albums sold vs. 1.3 billion digital track sales, so that's basically a $3 billion album industry vs. a $1 billion singles industry but I guess nobody listens to albums anymore, so might as well just leave that money sitting on the table.

the case of artists like Azealia Banks is kinda illustrative in that someone can throw 10 different singles at the wall individually trying to make one stick like that one did a couple years ago that made her famous, and in the end they could've had a whole album but instead there are just a bunch of 'failed' singles that are now too 'old' to be on whatever album they eventually do release. ABanks does that because she has to, or her label believes she has to to achieve what they want her to. Gaga gets to make an album, and then just release it after one or two teaser singles, because she made it big already and she's doing what most artists actually want to do, make songs that aren't singles and use the singles to sell the whole package.

yes thanks pro tools i'm aware of that, but some people want to go to a studio and there are a lot of people that don't have living situations where they can track live drums and loud rock instruments.

well yes of course. but a lot of the artists that have been mentioned on this thread can absolutely afford that if they want it. and, obviously, an awful lot of records are made without either live drums or loud rock instruments.

i totally get your basic point: in a lot of ways, and not only financially, recording 10 songs is more economical than recording one. but artists these days aren't nearly as tethered to expensive studios as they used to be.

the people that don't need soundproofed rooms and instruments and a million mics -- rappers and DIY singers and dance producers adn noise artists and indie acts who use synths and drum machines -- are usually the people that churn out an album/mixtape or two every year

Before I get too mind expanding, I have to say that I've really enjoyed reading this topic and everyone's insights. A lot of things to consider. A little unsettling for a lifelong record nerd, but nice to have a forum like this to bounce ideas around among like minded folks.

Anyway. . .

This past summer, I spent just about every day stoned out of my gourd. I would wake up to several very large hits and then snack on bread and very potent canabutter throughout the day. In those late afternoon/early evening post-dinner hours when my high was finally waning, I would often put a record on and nap. In those meditation-ish sessions, I found that I would love to return to the Sea and Cake more often than anything else in my collection. Drifting in and out of THC-induced dreams, I saw a scenario (on several occasions; a recurring "dream" of sorts — though I'm positive that's not the right word at all) of the Sea and Cake as a state-sanctioned and endorsed band in a 1984-esque isolationist America. Everyone else hated America and we hated them right back. But here was this band making the potentially very volatile word at large a sustainable place through their peaceful and idiosyncratic music.

I will spare the details of why I was thinking the band's music was so important as to be world-uniting (quite literally), but the format they "released" it in was the really important part: they would debut material live and only release proper recordings of the songs that got the most positive reactions. In my "dreams", this meant they really only ever released singles and EPs. They did have albums, but most times, those were just bargain collections of the previous year or two's singles and b-sides — mainly put out for convenience to people who couldn't afford to buy singles. Sometimes, the recordings would be newly re-recorded versions, but the point being is that the records always did well, because they contained songs that were already proven popular with the audience.

I understand that's just a pot-influenced pipe dream, but think about it. Maybe the album has come under scrutiny because it is seen as a necessity when, for most bands and artists these days, let's be honest, it isn't.

Anyhoo, feel free to make fun of me now.

(no, I'm not indulging that heavily —or at all— anymore)

some dude some ppl want to make rock music with loud instruments, but I'll investigate tho this "rap" business you speak of

right, but i was just saying that even for acts for whom "it's silly to book a day at the studio and set up drums and mics to just record one song" doesn't apply, there doesn't seem to be any desire to just do one-off songs and not albums

http://media0.giphy.com/media/RQBkc3AF4VZxS/giphy.gif

Drums?

Maybe the album has come under scrutiny because it is seen as a necessity when, for most bands and artists these days, let's be honest, it isn't.

"Scrutiny" is really not a term I would use for Lefsetz's ramblings or some ilxors whiney poptimist daydreams. If the album is not a necessity then how do you propose that artists get their work stocked in record stores, or reviewed by outlets that only review albums? Are artists supposed to wait several years to tour until they have enough singles to play a full set? And what do they sell at the show lots of separate 7"s? With blank b-sides of course, because you wouldn't want to make anyone buy any filler.

Think about it

Well, I guess I should have prefaced all that with a personal philosophy/belief: bands need to play live **A LOT** before ever thinking about making a record.

those are two totally different paths. bands who play a ton live before recording their first single probably can't write very well. in the heyday of the singles dominated industry it was probably more common for great hit singles to come from a songwriter and a bunch of session players putting something together in the studio and then cobbling together some phony touring band after it became a hit.

bands who play a ton live before recording their first single probably can't write very well.

i think this is completely totally false, playing live is the best place to know which of your songs are terrible and cull the set....if anything you should play out for a year, realize that you suck and ditch an entire album's worth of awkward first songs then record the second batch, plus you're leagues better at just performing and understanding how to sound good together and play together as a band...which honestly some bands just sound good, they understand how to balance each other and how their sounds fit together, that makes getting a good recording way easier...even just shit like drummer that play correctly, know how to tune drums right etc.

Yeah but if you are trying to set up a tour and maybe even get some interviews or press in other towns you sort of need an album (or at least an EP) of material to promote and discuss.

I agree that bands should play a ton live before recording anything but rehearsing for said shows is probably the most important thing you can do in a band and really who has the time for that anymore if you are setting up shows, recording your demos, writing to PR people, promoting your stuff on social media, etc.

That's why Salem played 10 thousand Fader Fort concerts before releasing their first record

hard work pays off

I agree that bands should play a ton live before recording anything but rehearsing for said shows is probably the most important thing you can do in a band and really who has the time for that anymore if you are setting up shows, recording your demos, writing to PR people, promoting your stuff on social media, etc.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, November 6, 2013 12:29 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^yes but honestly why bother with all that stuff if you suck? get good first.

Making bad records until you can make a good one is as valid as playing bad shows until you can play a good one imo. But we're getting pretty far of course of the thread's topic.

the ease of recording and access to protools and doing that over playing live is why we have 10 zillion glockenspiel indie horrible bands that clog up whiney's in-box

That's why Salem played 10 thousand Fader Fort concerts before releasing their first record

― some dude, Wednesday, November 6, 2013 1:34 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hard work pays off

― lorde willin' (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, November 6, 2013 1:52 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

irl lol at this exchange

bands who play a ton live before recording their first single probably can't write very well.

this is such a ridiculous assertion

one of many recently

I'm just coming at it from the opposite pov from austin. I care about records, not live shows, and I've seen a lot of really great, amazingly tight live bands who make really boring records, and plenty of people who make amazing records but can't pull it off live. I prefer the latter.

If a band is playing a TON of live shows (I guess we would need to define that more clearly but whatever) and nobody is interested in helping them make a record, then yeah they probably don't have a hit song. Playing a ton more shows isn't going to help that.

If a band is playing a TON of live shows (I guess we would need to define that more clearly but whatever) and nobody is interested in helping them make a record, then yeah they probably don't have a hit song.

#mountainclimberwhoplaysanelectricguitar

great example. wu tang clearly should have honed their live chops for years before starting to make beats.

rap is a completely different thing than rock bands.

bands in the 60s and 70s were more likely to have played around on the live circuit for awhile before making albums as opposed today, which is why acts of those days often struggled to make classic albums like we see on today's thriving major label rock scene.

and i wasn't talking about wu tang i was talking about you acting like some kinda a&r who somehow things the music business of all fuckin things is a meritorcracy

I didn't realize this thread was just for rock bands.

actually, I do think a lot of those great live bands of the '60s struggled to make good albums. look at any garage compilation and you'll find thousands of regional bands who had big local followings and played tons of live shows but never did much on record: one hit wonders, minor regional hits, covers, etc. and a lot of the greatest singles from the pre-album era were manufactured studio projects put together by songwriters, producers, and session players.

pretty sure those songwriters, producers, and session players generally had experience playing live music

this is a thread where people tell musicians that they should only release singles and that they shouldn't record until they've played live for years, and I'm the guy who sounds like an a&r?

yeah beatles, stones, kinks, hendrix, the who, etc etc didn't have much live experience good point

regional garage bands and one-hit wonders created some of the greatest music ever recorded

experience playing live music ≠ playing a song live for years with the same musicians before you go into the studio to record it

playing a song live for years with the same musicians before you go into the studio to record it ≠ can't write very well

i'm not talking about years, i'm just saying it's good to be a working band that's playing shows and yes unless you are like the smiths or some weird outlier your first batch of songs is going to be shitty

i'm talking about being a GOOD BAND that generally helps you to be a good band

recorded music has alienated people from music

live music has been dragging down recorded music for a century

I say nobody should be allowed to perform live until they have a few classic albums under their belt

if only there were band that wasn't so tied to these archaic paradigms of being a rock band, perhaps one that embraced the full potential of home digital recording and used the internet as its primary vehicle of communication between itself and its audience instead of outmoded song delivery methods like "concerts" and "gigs". i bet they would be pretty amazing.

lmao

actually they seem like a pretty good example of what the singles over albums people are asking for

totally knew what that was going to be, trusty ilx

Anyone here read Blockbusters yet? It seems to take the Spielberg/Lucas warning of goliath productions eating everything and not just agreeing, but going all-in on that strategy.

The book has been buzz worthy in the tech/entertainment crossover set, but I haven't read it (or much analysis of it)

Maybe this looks interesting, and it's obvious that the trends have actually been towards exacerbating these dynamics - power laws and the 1% - makes sense that they would go all in, managing the margins means you're stuck in the long tail.