Is the Album dead?

[Dude]

Similar to the CD discussion but different - is the album dead as an art form? After the physical medium dies, are we still going to download collections of songs released by artists? This gets into rumblings from Sufjan Stevens / Thom Yorke / Jim O'Rourke on the impending death of the album. I thought I remember someone asking Jeff about it, and he stuck up for the album being a "emotionally pleasing" medium or somesuch.

 

Personally, I am way more excited over the announcement of a new album versus a new single. Sequencing, cover art, the whole mystique associated with cracking open a new physical album all bring me way more joy than clicking download on an individual song or album. I'm a total geek for the mythology of The Great Rock Albums. They may be a dying breed, but fuck if I'm going to exclusively listen to the Beatles on shuffle, or Wilco.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Guest Speed Racer]

I'm with you - I much, much prefer albums over singles.

 

I think it's premature, if not misplaced, to discuss the death of the album. Musicians who have always loved albums will release albums, and those who are at the whim of labels will likely move to the more cost-effective singles, but that's not really anything new. Discographies of bands popular in the 60s show that some leaned toward singles whereas the Kinks, Stones, Beatles and Dylan (to name oh but a few) really did prefer to construct and release albums.

 

Frankly, if bands like Creed and Vertical Horizon went the way of the single while the Wilcos of the world continue to release albums, that would only save space for the goods.

 

And on Sufjan, did you read that whole interview with Pitchfork? Boy, if there was ever someone who was needlessly crafting an existential crisis...He came off as a whiny little brat in that interview, and I'm not inclined to say that about many people.

[Dude]

And on Sufjan, did you read that whole interview with Pitchfork? Boy, if there was ever someone who was needlessly crafting an existential crisis...He came off as a whiny little brat in that interview, and I'm not inclined to say that about many people.

 

No, but I read this bit in Paste, is it the same thing?

 

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/11/sufjan-stevens-on-the-road-to-find-out.html

[Guest Speed Racer]

I don't know - did it make you throw up a little in your mouth?

 

http://pitchfork.com/news/37026-sufjan-stevens-calls-the-50-states-album-project-such-a-joke/

[jff]

Similar to the CD discussion but different - is the album dead as an art form? After the physical medium dies, are we still going to download collections of songs released by artists?

 

I reject the idea that the physical medium will die, but if the album were to die it would be a very sad day. Almost all of the recorded music I like works best when listened to in the form of an album.

[u2roolz]

Perhaps some artists feel that the non-singles are just filler and why bother releasing them if they don't play them live. It's almost as if they never happened.

To use Analogman's Ryan Adams example, I don't really recall every song off of Cardinology. He played about 5 songs off of the cd when I saw him last. So if one releases singles and they become big because it's only one song to grow on maybe an artist will play that live and then dig back deeper into their catalog. LOL. Edit: The LOL is there because digging back deeper usually means the album tracks.

 

It only really satisfies a record company to have more than whatever 10 songs to put out from time to time.

 

For Wilco, maybe they could release a song once every 2 months that was left off of SBS & W(TA) on their site or iTunes. That way they'll have a tabula rasa (hey I'm a Lost fan so..) when it's time for their next record.

 

All of that being said I still love getting an album, but if that alone is stopping me/us from getting stuff then we should think outside the box.

Edit: Speaking of boxes, this whole idea of releasing one song at a time is really trying to put an end to the "box set". Granted, most artists will eventually put these standalone songs onto a box set.

[Dude]

I don't know - did it make you throw up a little in your mouth?

 

http://pitchfork.com/news/37026-sufjan-stevens-calls-the-50-states-album-project-such-a-joke/

 

Yeah, the Paste interview (which the Pitchfork link refers to) is a bit petulant I guess, but there is a kernel of truth to his self-created neuroses. Once you eliminate the physical limitations of a medium, there is no reason an album can't be three minutes long, or 5 hours, or a song can't be five seconds long or five days.

[Atticus]

Once you eliminate the physical limitations of a medium, there is no reason an album can't be three minutes long, or 5 hours, or a song can't be five seconds long or five days.

 

that's what I first thought of when I saw this thread. I don't think the album concept will die, but I look forward to different ideas/lengths for albums, as the old physical limitations inevitably ended up with good stuff getting cut and crap getting thrown in as filler.

[tongue-tied]

I don't think "the album" is in any danger at the moment, but I'd love to see rock bands take "the single" more seriously again.

[LouieB]

I'd love to see rock bands take "the single" more seriously again.

Yea me too.

 

LouieB

[Ghost of Electricity]

that's what I first thought of when I saw this thread. I don't think the album concept will die, but I look forward to different ideas/lengths for albums, as the old physical limitations inevitably ended up with good stuff getting cut and crap getting thrown in as filler.

This is a good point as it reminds us that the album as a coherent piece or work is itself a product of technology- i think it was around 1960 that they could physically make the groove smal enough to get about 22 or 23 minutes of music on each side of a record. It wasn't until several years later that the album developed into something which could be presented as a unified whole- around the time of "Revolver," say. (okay mayber Rubber Soul). Until then they were just collections of songs.

 

Similarly, you might say that digital technology has relieved us of these time restraints. There are certainly more possibilities in terms of what might be presxented as a unified whole, singles perhaps being taken more seriously, e.p.-lentgh "records" being treated differently, or 6-hour epics being tried. We simply must wait and see what people will think up.

 

That said, the typical "album" is more or less the same lentgh as a typical symphony, so works or that length have been around a while and there is no reason to think that they will be going anywhere.

[tinnitus photography]

Yea me too.

 

LouieB

 

to do this, the single would have to have radio (or some similar vehicle) have significance once again...not sure that's gonna happen in our increasingly fractious world...

[Analogman]

I think it does, with regards to people like Britney Spears, or whoever the teen star is currently. There is something about the whole idea that I find offensive for some odd reason. I suppose that is due to the fact that I prefer the album as a whole.

[quarter23cd]

I don't expect "the album" to die entirely. I can't speak to the physical medium--that part is kind of already fading into relative obscurity--but I don't think the idea of presenting multiple pieces of music as a collective whole is going anywhere. I think a lot of artists will continue to work this way by choice, even if it is no longer "necessary" or "the way things are done".

 

At the other end of the spectrum you have recording artists who are really just shooting for a couple hit singles, but are then left to fill up an album's worth of run time because it is what is expected of them--even if it stinks. How many albums have you heard that only have 1 or 2 good songs? For those artists, the singles approach seems perfectly suited.

 

Optimistically, the way I see it going down is for artists being able to release their stuff in a way that is meaningful to them. If a song is a standalone single, great. Or they may choose to release small batches of related songs.(akin to an EP) Or, if there is an overarching theme to it, they may choose to release "album length" stuff. Undoubtedly, somebody will take this to the opposite end of the spectrum and, unburdened by physical-media capacity, will record a 99 hour continuous track as a single song just to see if they can. (edit: I just read Ghost of Electricity's comment a couple posts up and realize I was beaten to this idea )

 

One interesting bright side I can see to this is potentially speeding up the release cycle and not having to wait 3-4 years for releases from your favorite band.

[Erik Ritland]

The album *seems* to be dying, as a popular form anyway, in popular culture. In general people just want to hear a couple songs that fit their fancy from whatever musicians they like. Put them on their iPod, only listen to it when it comes on shuffle. CDs by popular musicians haven't been an art form as "albums" used to be since basically the advent of the CD.

 

However, there has always been, and I hope always will be, a large amount of people who appreciate the album as an art form - as a cohesive whole, artwork, liner notes, feel of the album, as a unique expression of where a band is at. Fans of bands like Wilco, and of older bands, seem to find it appealing. In the Top 40 it isn't seen so much, as it used to be.

 

On this front, does anybody here like the My Chemical Romance album "The Black Parade"? It's one of the only seriously popular top 40 albums that I've seen come out in a long time with a distinctive and purposeful "album" feel. It also happened to be popular with kids, although I suppose those kids didn't care about the concept and just downloaded their two favorite songs and discarded the rest anyway. However, a popular band had the ambition to make an "album", and I find that to be a step in the right direction.

 

I think albums, on the whole, would have a better chance to survive if bands didn't pad their releases with 12, 14, or 16 songs, clocking in at 60, 70, 80 minutes long. It seems counter-intuitive to me that as people's attention spans have gotten worse the length of albums has increased. To listen to 8 songs from one artist is more than plenty, and is akin to how things were in say, the '70s, or late '60s. '60s albums had more songs, but they were shorter, so the listening experience was still palatable.

 

I'd also like a return to the Side A/Side B format. The smaller chunks of time you ask for from people the better! This is one of the subtle things about albums that made them work that people don't remember/realize. It's also fun with Sides to play around with one side being different from the other.

 

Personally I do think that the CD, and "albums", are dying. Nobody has the patience for them anymore. However, I'd love to see this change and I don't think they'll ever die completely. Fingers crossed.

[ih8music]

...was listening to my iTunes this morning and Westerberg's 49:00 came up. I really enjoyed being "forced" into listening to the entire album again.

 

Of course, it'd be annoying if every artist released their music as a single track - but that's certainly one way to preserve that album feel.

[deepseacatfish]

I wouldn't be surprised if singles (digital singles, that is) become the primary form in which music is released and consumed over the next couple of years. No doubt it's easiest to market a non-physical product when you only have on song to make a video for and to saturate the online/offline markets with. People like singles and it's a cheap easy way to consume what you like.

 

That said, serious musicians and serious consumers (ie. most of us here) want albums because they're looking for more than just a taste of a particular band, they're looking for narrative, depth, story, concept, art...something that holds pieces of music together in more than just a "popular shuffle" fashion. As a musician myself I love the process of thinking of music as a holistic piece, putting together tracks that have similar elements until I have something somewhat cohesive and satisfying. Music is meant to be listened to not in choppy bits but in arcing narrative gestures (check out basically every form of music out there if you're unsure). So yeah, the album will live on, it just may not be the center of the popular music universe.

[tongue-tied]

That said, serious musicians and serious consumers (ie. most of us here) want albums because they're looking for more than just a taste of a particular band, they're looking for narrative, depth, story, concept, art...something that holds pieces of music together in more than just a "popular shuffle" fashion. As a musician myself I love the process of thinking of music as a holistic piece, putting together tracks that have similar elements until I have something somewhat cohesive and satisfying. Music is meant to be listened to not in choppy bits but in arcing narrative gestures (check out basically every form of music out there if you're unsure). So yeah, the album will live on, it just may not be the center of the popular music universe.

 

I like albums too, but why disparage the single? Why can't a song stand on its own?

[deepseacatfish]

I like albums too, but why disparage the single? Why can't a song stand on its own?

Nothing wrong with singles, I just happen to think they are incomplete works. Though, to be fair a lot of artists do center their entire careers around singles, so in that sense they may almost be more representative for certain groups. Even so, I much prefer albums and their narrative to singles.

[Analogman]

Vinyl frontier: Why records sales are soaring again

 

 

By reissuing classic albums on vinyl, the industry has convinced fans to purchase music that they've already bought on CD

 

Back to the future ... the biggest growth area for vinyl is classic-rock reissues.

 

Record geeks rarely need a reason to feel smug, but vinyl hoarders worldwide had reassuring news the other week as Nielsen SoundScan released figures predicting that sales of proper, old-fashioned albums will top 2.8m by the end of 2009. This will mean an increase of almost 1m on last year and the highest annual figure for vinyl sales since SoundScan began tracking them in 1991.

 

This recession-defying spike has already been dismissed by some in the music industry. Indeed, one head of digital strategy at a major label reportedly prefaced his company's annual meeting with the proclamation that "the profit from vinyl sales wouldn't even pay for our lunch today", presumably before helping himself to another slice of dolphin cooked in orphan's tears. And while it's true that record sales count for less than 1% of overall music consumption, what's interesting is that buying vinyl is no longer the preserve of 12-inch mad DJs – the biggest growth area for vinyl is actually in country music, a genre not normally associated with the extended DJ Headcrab remix.

 

So while reissue labels like Soul Jazz, Finders Keepers or Numero Group continue to mine rock's past and mainstream labels release limited-edition vinyl versions of their albums in packaging made from pages of the Codex Leicester, this is really all just a sideshow. The main event is happening away from specialist shops and right in the middle of the road – where record companies are selling the public albums they've already bought.

 

In the 1980s, CDs became a neat way for the music industry to persuade music fans to replace their dog-eared vinyl copy of Sgt Pepper or Dark Side of the Moon at great expense. Now, as CDs sales nosedive and hi-fi manufacturers make noises about ceasing production of CD players, record companies are finding that the best new way of exploiting their catalogue isn't actually that new at all. In fact, it's pretty much exactly the same way that they exploited their catalogue around 1973: Warner Music has been reissuing classic albums from their archive on vinyl for several years through their Rhino imprint, while more recently Capitol in the US got in on the act, selling vinyl releases for twice as much as their CD counterparts. Their current biggest sellers? Sgt Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon.

 

So just as there are now more music magazines featuring stories about Music from Big Pink than ones about music by the Big Pink, it makes sense for the industry to target the slightly more seasoned listener by returning to a format that Baby Boomers feel comfortable with. But will this increased demand for vinyl mark a return to the days of the album as a cohesive body of songs, preferably housed in some suitably cosmic artwork? Will we see a revival of the daft concept album, the overtly pornographic sleeve or over-ornate packaging? Perhaps not. But if you've missed the sensation of putting down the needle on a record you first heard about 40 years ago, then you're probably in luck.

[LouieB]

Anything to keep making some money.....

 

LouieB

[Vacant Horizon]

good discussion here, especially the point about albums being longer and our attention spans declining. i can't stand a 14 song album. everybody is guilty of this a bit. drive by truckers are infamous for it. i think its the reason i just can't get totally into them. listening to patterson is not 'fun' but 76 minutes! too much. love wilco with their 10-12 song limit.

 

i also like the sides of albums. i've started doing this on my ipod.

[froggie]

1. i bet roger waters is pissed off with album sales dying

 

2. i dont like it when artists feel the need to fill up the full space of a CD. bob dylan said that Highlands was twice as long as the released version, when he first wrote it - funny how Time out of mind clocks in to nearly 80 minutes as it is!

[augurus]

Is the "hardcover book" dead?

[tongue-tied]

This is a good point as it reminds us that the album as a coherent piece or work is itself a product of technology- i think it was around 1960 that they could physically make the groove smal enough to get about 22 or 23 minutes of music on each side of a record. It wasn't until several years later that the album developed into something which could be presented as a unified whole- around the time of "Revolver," say. (okay mayber Rubber Soul). Until then they were just collections of songs.

 

That's in the eye of the listener! To my ears there are stronger underlying themes to "Beatles for Sale" than there are from the overt "we're a different band!" conceit of "Sgt. Pepper". I like "concept albums", but then again I feel recording a "collection of songs" is a concept in itself - one that is perhaps more worthy of attention than the (probably half-baked gimmicky (but maybe not!)) "concept" a band might put over their collection of songs.

 

Also, I call baloney on technical limitations of a "unified whole", records didn't need 23 minutes on a side for coherence to occur. A two-sided single is a coherent piece of work. A song is a coherent piece of work (usually). So when thinking of an "album", what gives or takes away coherence? Is it a narrative structure?, because it seems the most famous concept albums fail hard at sustaining a narrative. I think it's something more basic, like a recognizable songwriting voice, or voices. The Beatles popularized the "album" as a big vinyl LP with good presentation, one that's more from the band and less from marketing. I think it's important for the artist to have control over the presentation of their music, but I also think there's this weird reverence for the album-form that's both good because albums are a great tradition, but it also seems to dismiss everything else, like EPs and singles as though they don't reach a time-marker to be an Almighty Album. Yeah, the EP is good, but it's not like it can compare to a good LP!

 

 

That said, the typical "album" is more or less the same lentgh as a typical symphony, so works or that length have been around a while and there is no reason to think that they will be going anywhere.

 

Is there really some pseudoscience to a natural length of music or is this because record companies went to great lengths to get a good reproduction of classical music on records before pop/rock completely overtook sales?