The fate of the "album" versus digital singles

[nduffy26]

Hello People,
I just saw a short bit on the news today talking about how the "album" is dying out and may not be around for much longer. Now this would be due directly to the digital sales of single song mp3s. The strange part about it all to me is that it seems like the artists are all against that concept. I myself think the album is a crucial part of the music. Artists form songs, arrange songs, write songs all to be part of a package. That package is given a name, sometimes some great artwork/imagery, band information is included, lyrics are sometimes included. This part of the experience.
This of course would probably not include the pop type musics, or any other music that is made specifically to sell singles. Genres of music that only give the people what they know that want. The people should not be able to decide what kind of music is being made. The consumers have no idea about anything relating to music. The music has to lead the people. I digress, I assume there are a lot of members here at taxi (I would be curious to know exactly how many) and I assume that many of us are artists, composers, creators. And I assume that many of you feel the same way about the existence of the album as I.
I believe the existence of the mp3 and the ability to sell them as single is extremely important to the independent or unsigned artists. I do not feel that way for professional acts. I still buy albums, in fact, I dont think I have ever bought a single mp3. However I have downloaded (Due to a very progressive concept that pearl jam records ALL of their shows) an entire pearl jam concert that I attended. That is a cool thing to have a concert that I was actually at. It came with artwork and song listings that you could download and could print out onto CD inserts. Anyway, I think the insustry as a whole needs to make a professional looking album available for downloading and printing as well as a copy you can buy in the store. I am making the call to anyone who may have connections in the industry, anyone who may become a singed act someday, anyone who does not want to see the album go extinct. Stop allowing music to be broken up into bite size pieces for the public to shove into their already stuffed mouth. Just like the old days, you have your couple singles, you sell them individually and then you sell the entire pacckage as a whole.

[Ajetpackoperation]

The album format is great. Or rather it was. It can be used as a huge canvas to pain an epic narrative - which was probably a cool idea in the 70s. Personally I think the freedom derived from the album format can also be very constricting. It forces artists to make music a certain way (must fit the requirement of a full length album) and it forces the listener to listen a certain way (must listen to a predetermined sequence of songs for the entire duration of said full length album). There's also another problem - Length of time between albums. It takes a good 5 or so years at least for many of my favorite artists to follow up there previous album. If I didn't love them so much, I'd most likely completely forget about them after that amount of time.

What I would like to see, and what I think is more innovative, is the idea of coming out with a fairly regular stream of high quality music and music-related projects. I really love the idea of an ongoing series of artistic endeavors that would showcase the artists creativity as well as creating a strong relationship with the people who enjoy the artist's work.

[Kolstad]

Yeah that's where the crisis is, isn't it? The moneymakers in the business used to be albums, now there are only singles for download. Does make a BIG difference in earnings, I'd think.

But it's the buyers who determines the market, and they want downloads, so they can get it on the iPod and their phones, and so they don't have to buy what they consider 'fillers'

This is also where the songwriters market went, as to be honest, we mostly write 'fillers'.. but GOOD fillers

[Hookjaw Brown]

Neal Young was once asked why a lot of his songs sounded the same. He replied that his whole body of work was just one song,.....said in different ways.

We write each of our songs to be 'stand alone' songs, but each is written to hopefully be a 'hit' in a niche market. Someday we may be able to write a series of songs that all have the same basic underlying idea, of course one day we may write an opera!

[mojobone]

Humbug! Iambic pentameter's so fourteenth century; the sonnet's the coming thing! Seriously, the album format might be dead to some, but not me. (and not my fans, either) If people are only buying singles, should I just make singles, then? I think not; a smart label/musician makes music for several tiers of fandom, which can be defined by what they're interested in purchasing. Casual fans jes' want the hit, but true fans are invested enough to trust me a little further with their time and tastes and might even enjoy being surprised that not all the music I make is suitable for hard-charging bar parties and stripper pole calisthenics. As a fan, I like longer forms/formats that take me on a little journey, (long as I can get there in forty minutes or less, heh) and not everybody has the attention span of a mosquito.

[Ajetpackoperation]

I've just really seriously started composing/songwriting and singing and I've decided that in all likelihood I would not release a traditional album. This by no means suggests that I'm just gonna release continuous iteration of my lame attempt at a hit single. Being the person that I am with the interests I have, I just can't be as free as I want to releasing music in the the aforementioned format.

I'm more comfortable with releasing a pretty steady stream of whatever strikes me creatively at the moment. It could be a series of songs, then a collaboration with visual/mixed media artists, experiments with contemporary classical/new music composers, documentaries, or a showcase of instruments that people engineered and built from scratch. If I did want to explore a particular vein of music, hip hop being one of them, I'd create an ongoing sub channel with my songs and collaborations with other producers/musicians. I'd have another one for jazz also, as well as any other vein I feel like exploring. The idea is that its high quality output and that it's an ongoing series. As far as money goes, If you become "star" of your own high quality series, there may be opportunities to bring advertisers in. And after a while or steadily releasing music, it would be a easy to release a (most likely limited edition) collection of output in a physical format as a souvenir. That's just the beginning, though.

Music doesn't reside in the music industry anymore. Most people haven't figured that out. The ones that have have no clue what to do with that knowledge.

[ernstinen]

Good Topic!

Now, I know some friends (who will remain anonymous) that downloaded a LOT of old singles in the early Napster days just because they could NOT find singles from the "singles era" of the 60's in music stores, on compilations, or anywhere. That's because there were never any "albums" of most of those singles to buy. Blame that on the record companies. They dropped the ball, and will regret it forever.

But, "albums" will live on forever to REAL music fans. Think Beatles, Stones, Who, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix etc. Can you imagine listening to Nirvana's "Nevermind" without listening to the whole album? How about Pink Floyd? U2? Tom Petty? Radiohead? How about Beethoven? Miles Davis? John Coltrane? Yes? Steely Dan? Allman Brothers? Phish? The list goes on and on.

A lot of the rock albums were "concept" albums, where the whole IDEA was to listen to the recording from beginning to end. That was the artist's intent, and breaking them up into "singles" is akin to breaking up Beethoven's symphonies into "movements" and discarding the rest. It just doesn't work that way. It's degrading to the artist. It's like cutting a small piece of a Monet painting, framing it, and putting it on the wall just because you CAN.

Maybe people are downloading digital singles because there are no true artists anymore, I don't know; or, as has been previously said, that attention spans are becoming so limited that people these days can't think beyond 4-5 minutes at a time.

My 2 pesos,

Ernesto

[Ajetpackoperation]

Beethoven: "Man, I really gotta hurry finish my ninth album!"

Serioiusly, breaking up the Beethoven's symphonies into movements isn't some crazy idea some A&R on Beethoven's label came up with - It's called sonata-allegro form. The whole Album/Single dichotomy is a false one. And a dumb one. Oh, and the idea that one is not a "true fan" if one doesn't party like it's 1969 is beyond insulting. The classic rock era's dead - barely worth even mentioning in a discussion about contemporary means of creating and distributing music. I still buy albums, since it's the primary format that most of my favorite artists release music in, but I keep my ITunes on "shuffle" unless I'm really in the mood for a particular recording.

I'm waiting for artist's to branch out but nobody's taking the cue.

[mojobone]

You mean there are other formats besides albums/singles? Who knew? (yeah, there's also the EP and the album 'side')

Casual fans aren't casual all the time, btw; probably they should be described as casual listeners only when they're cherry picking hits on an iPod. I may listen to Alice In Chains, Parliament or the Kronos Quartet casually, but I have every Jeff Beck album, every Stevie Ray Vaughan album and an entire collection of ancient and modern music boxes and steam calliopes on vinyl.....

[simonparker]

I think you're going to see a lot of "singles" being released by the same artist over a period of time rather than an "album" of songs put together. And while you get "less" $ for single releases, it is cheaper on the consumer than purchasing an entire CD, and in the overall scheme of things, if you have a popular artist releasing 10 songs over 8 months, and 7 of those ten sell 1M + downloads at $1.29 and the remainder puts the gross revenue at $10M, that's roughly the equivalent of a record company selling a half million units of a physical CD at about $18 per CD (at peak CD prices before the download era). Add into the fact that there's no distributor cost aside from the website (no packaging, photography, etc.) on these types of singles, there's a pretty high net margin. Also factor in 360 deals, where these singles are playing like mad on the radio station, and the labels get a piece of that publishing... not to mention streaming revenues from sites such as Rhapsody... In other words, think about just the digital sale v the CD concept with someone - let's say it's someone like Gaga where every song of her's is a multi-million seller:

US sales only per Wikipedia/Nielsen soundscan -

"Just Dance" 5M x 1.29 = $6,450,000 gross
"Poker Face" 5M x 1.29 = $6,450,000 gross
"Love Game" 1M x 1.29 = $1,290,000 gross
"Paparazzi" 2M x 1.29 = $2,580,000 gross
"Bad Romance" 3M x 1.29 = $3,870,000 gross
"Telephone" 2M x 1.29 = $2,580,000 gross
"Alehandro" 400K to date x 1.29 = $516,000 gross

Grand total: $23,736,000
Divided by cost of CD @ $9 = equivalent amount of CD units sold per song price,

= 2,637,333 units

So, the 2.6M units is perhaps, half of what Gaga would sell pre download era, and probably revnues are 50% lower, but Gaga could probably sustain this kind of revenue stream through individual downloads for years to come, whereas, if we were still in the pre-download era, overall sales of her CD would fall release after release (think Alanis Morrisette, big first CD, much smaller 2nd CD sales, no profit on 3rd CD release, etc.) so, that too, would help "dig" into the loss of physical unit sales - the record companies are much tougher on getting "hit single" digital downloads and the consumer is buying "hit single" downloads and no longer album tracks. Therefore, Gaga's longevity is based on having "hits" and "hits" only, no longer album cuts...therefore, at the end of the day/career, it's quite reasonable that Gaga will make the record company 25% less than she would've with physical CDs, but the label makes up for that cost with the 360 deals in place. Who said record companies are "hurting"?