Is This the Death of the Album?

[Lord Lav]

Is this the death of the album?  In this internet age that is a very valid question.

The video below features an interview with rapper, ‘Nelly’ talking openly about his views on the current state of the music industry.

The big question asked of him is, “Do you think a record label is necessary these days?”

Nelly speaks his opinion with regard to labels and uses his limited knowledge of ‘Chief Keef’ as an example of someone that probably would have been better off without a record label.

The main part of this interview that I found particularly interesting was his suggestion of releasing singles rather than albums.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this.

I still love listening to albums in their entirety (I’m listening to one as I write this very post…) and I myself have recently released a concept album Lord of the Dead.  I have read some interesting criticisms of the singles over albums model from the likes of Meghan Morrison and Moses Avalon.  Nonetheless, we have to admit, it’s not the 90′s anymore and it most certainly is not the 70′s!

The golden era of the album was perhaps the late 60′s to early 70s where for the first time, an artist could escape the confines of the three-minute pop single and express themselves as never before across the expanded artistic canvas of an album or LP (Long Play).  During that time it was more about creating a cohesive collection of songs that were supposed to be listened to as one full piece.  The album became almost a cash-in on the single rather than the other way around as albums out sold singles in the UK and US.   The LP allowed popular music to become an art form from the artwork adorning gatefold sleeves, to the ideas and concepts that bound the songs together, to the unforgettable music itself.  Legendary groups the likes of Led Zeppelin made it big by refusing to release a single.  Their success relied largely on their musical greatness and the fact that it was only available in one cohesive piece of compiled music.  People were spending more money on albums than any other form of entertainment by the mid-70s.

It was a great time for musical indulgence and artistic expression.  A time where artistic creativity really did pay like it never had done before.  As both record companies and artists (in a lot of cases) made a huge amount of money from this.  If people wanted to get a single, they would have to spend £10-£15 to get the whole album.  Even if you chose to buy the single from the album individually, it would still set you back around £3.  Compare that to the standard 99p download available today!

This was of course in the pre-digital download days and even the pre-cassette and music video days.  Releasing an album was the more lucrative option because it was more cost effective to press a record with numerous songs bundled together, rather than spending more cash on a fresh pressing for every individual single.  Added to that, many consumers preferred the album format rather than a single as they could sit and listen to it without having to move the record every few minutes.  If you enjoyed taking drugs, albums were great because they allowed you to get smacked off your tits and mong out at your own leisure from whatever narcotic indulgences tickled your fancy, as the hassle of having to constantly turn the record over, was kept to a minimum.

Budgets weren’t stretched like they are now.  A record company’s budget for a band could be spent entirely on the creation and pressing of their album.  With the arrival of the 80′s that budget had to be stretched to also fund music videos and so forth.

Since then the album has had an initially slow, to drastic decline with the arrival of digital downloads.  The costs of recording are drastically lower than it ever has been before.  There’s been an explosion of choice for the consumer.  It’s just as easy to listen to thousands of songs on shuffle as it is to listen to a full concept album.  In fact shuffle could be considered easier with the almost unlimited number of songs to listen to one after the other.  People don’t need to change disc every 12 songs.  They can literally press play and leave their phone to constantly play thousands of songs until the battery dies.  Most people actually like more choice and more customisation.  They don’t want to necessarily be confined to the collection of songs the artist intended them to listen to.  They want what they want, as and when they want it.

Artistry aside and looking at things from a strictly business perspective, consistent releases of individual singles are likely to be more profitable than albums unlike the golden album era.  Singles bought individually actually pay the owner better at 99p each than releasing an album or collection of songs at £5.  With music being available for free it makes even more sense as it is easier to build a following off of consistent new content being made available.  Building following of people that have your attention is what allows us to make a profitable living nowadays.

I still feel a since of nostalgia for the golden era of albums despite me being too young to have actually witnessed it.  As I said earlier, I still like to listen to albums in there entirety.  Listening to a disc rather than download, I have a big vinyl and CD collection comprised of many classic albums, both classic in a cult sense and classic in a best selling sense.  I came into DJing and music production through vinyl!  My album Lord of the Dead will eventually come out on vinyl.  I **** love the dusty bastards….  The resurgence of vinyl shows that there are a large number of people that feel the same way as me too.  For that reason I don’t think albums will die out per se.  It will just become even more of a niche consumer choice.  There will still be a market for them because people want choice.  Part of that choice being the ability to listen to albums the old fashioned way.

All that being said, the market has changed and not necessarily for the worse.  Just because it might turn out to be more profitable to release consistent singles rather than an album doesn’t necessarily mean the death of creativity.  The really important thing is that we as artists are now the ones with the power.  We no longer need any gatekeepers to make a living expressing ourselves.  We can pick ourselves, build our followings and make money on our own.  Of course labels can help but they are no longer the necessity they used to be.  As Napoleon Hill said, “Do not wait, the time will never be just right.  Start where you stand and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”  The great thing is the tools available to us in this day and age are already pretty damn good!

Watch the interesting interview with Nelly below.

For those of you that still want to listen to a concept album, you can check out Lord of the Dead available on iTunes, Amazon and my own online store.

For those that like to listen to individual singles for free first, go check out my Lord of the Dead preview on Lord Lav BitTorrent.

[Kreatorkind]

That's why I just decided to release a single song every day. People really only want to listen in short bursts... if at all. I've released 35 songs so far this year and it seems to be interesting to a lot of people... I've sold quite a few songs so far! I think constant content is what people demand now. They don't have the attention span for anything else.

[Lord Lav]

Thanks awesome Kreatorkind!  I tend to agree, I'm adapting my business model the exact same way.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I love albums, but I agree we're in an era that is more analogous to the late 1950s in terms of listener's preferred format - at that time, singles were the hot item, while albums were often hastily put-together collections of a couple of hit singles along with a bunch of filler and fluff... which is part of the reason they were far less popular at the time.

The Beatles and Beach Boys and other 60s artists came along and turned that paradigm on its ear - how? By releasing albums with little to no filler - all-beef records that people WANTED to listen to all the way through.

Napster (and today, online streaming services like Spotify) allowed people to pick and choose the good stuff while avoiding the stuff they didn't like. IMHO, while the time limitations of today, and the large number of competing technologies vying for everyone's time and attention (videos, multi-channel cable TV, computers and the Internet, etc. etc.) mean that we're not likely to see a huge return to the time-consuming practice of listening to albums as works of art in their own right, I still think we could see some increase in the format's popularity again - but IMO, that will ONLY happen when someone comes along and drops records on us that are all beef, no filler.

Want to release an album and have it become popular as such? Make sure it's STUNNING - no so-so songs - we want to be KNOCKED OUT! That's the secret IMO...

[Vito Corleone]

A lot of it is the cultural perceptions of what music is all about. The combination of changing technologies and reduced attention spans results in the album having no real place in the lives of most people. Who is going to spend 40 minutes just LISTENING to music in 2014? I don't know that even a new "Rubber Soul" all-killer-no-filler album would matter much to anyone.

 

Who would it matter to? Why? Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" album had 6 top 5 singles (8 if you count two singles added to a later version), five of which went to #1. (Only the second album in history to have 5 #1 singles if anyone mistakenlly believes we live in an age where every single gets to be #1 for a day...) Albums aren't going to get much more "all killer no filler" than that one, yet it only managed to sell 2.7 million copies in the US and 6 million worldwide. Twenty years ago, this album certainly would have sold many times that amount.

 

Meanwhile, all 8 of those singles sold more than 2 million downloads each. Now before somebody snarkily chimes in that this isn't "quality" music or a good album, it certainly is in the hearts and minds of the intended audience. And again, certainly would have sold many time more copies a couple of decades ago.

 

So what's the problem? Is it just that it's a 'collection of singles' rather than a cohesive, single work of art? If Katy had strung them all together in a more artistic format ala Dark Side of The Moon would kids have been compelled to hear it presented that way? I dunno. Certainly "collection of singles" albums like Rumours and Thriller had no problem selling mega-copies in the past, so I'm not sure that's the issue.

 

I really think it's about people no longer having the time/inclination to consume long-form music programs. Kids aren't going to sit in front of the stereo listening to the latest release by their favorite artist for 40 minutes like we all did when we were kids. Music is something to be consumed 'on the go'. They listen to it while driving, while working, while dancing and clubbing.

 

Yes, it's much like the late 50s/early 60s. And maybe there's really not anything wrong with that. As musicians and artists, it's our job to fit within the confines of the technology and desires of the audience. Mozart wrote chamber music and operas because that's how people heard music. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote songs that told stories that fit into Broadway shows. Pink Floyd wrote more expansive music that neatly fit onto two 20-minute sides. Now it's about what works on iTunes and Spotify and YouTube.

 

Maybe someday a new technology will come along that will generate excitement among the public that will renew interest in longer-format listening and a new Beatles will come up with the next Sgt Pepper and revitalize the album format. Or maybe not. Maybe the album will remain a niche means of expression the way the symphony has.

[daddymack]

Agreed as to the fact that technology has fostered the 'short attention span theater of the mind' in the new millenium. It is all about immediacy, all about now, all about, well, disposability, if you will. Excellent point vis a vis the Katy Perry release...the singles far outsold the disc; by the same token, that is exactly what her music is designed to do: sell singles, because yes, the paradigm has shifted, and 'no one' [under forty] plays CDs anymore except maybe in their cars, and even then, the eject button is a finger flick away.

[Mason Bruce]

They probably said the same thing when they started selling singles on record, or when the radio would only play what was on the top 40 or whatever. I think the album is too engrained in the industry to die completely. However, the art does seem to be dying as a form of connected songs, one flowing into the next like Dark Side of the Moon, especially with alternative methods of distribution like the internet, youtube, etc., and people only picking and choosing what they like.

[RobRoy]

I love albums' date=' but I agree we're in an era that is more analogous to the late 1950s in terms of listener's preferred format - at that time, singles were the hot item, while albums were often hastily put-together collections of a couple of hit singles along with a bunch of filler and fluff... which is part of the reason they were far less popular at the time.

The Beatles and Beach Boys and other 60s artists came along and turned that paradigm on its ear - how? By releasing albums with little to no filler - all-beef records that people WANTED to listen to all the way through.

Napster (and today, online streaming services like Spotify) allowed people to pick and choose the good stuff while avoiding the stuff they didn't like. IMHO, while the time limitations of today, and the large number of competing technologies vying for everyone's time and attention (videos, multi-channel cable TV, computers and the Internet, etc. etc.) mean that we're not likely to see a huge return to the time-consuming practice of listening to albums as works of art in their own right, I still think we could see some increase in the format's popularity again - but IMO, that will ONLY happen when someone comes along and drops records on us that are all beef, no filler.

Want to release an album and have it become popular as such? Make sure it's STUNNING - no so-so songs - we want to be KNOCKED OUT! That's the secret IMO...

[/quote']I have a few thousand records and a few good turntables. I LOVE playing vinyl, when I have the time to just sit there and listen to music. But that's pretty rare.I see people like me as a dying breed. I figure when those raised on vinyl all die off or hit retirement homes, vinyl will end its temporary researgence (which, truth be told, is not all that big to begin with) and when those raised on CD's start getting older it will permanently kill the album.The invention of recording and the mass production of pre-recorded music had an amazing run but its days are about over. I remember being at my daughter's high school basketball practice in the late 90's and seeing CD's scattered all over the bleachers. Dozens of them. And every single one was home recorded. I read the writing on the wall way back then. I told my daughters that pre-recorded music was about to become the free toy in the happy meal.And the last CD I purchased new was the appropriately named Monty Python double disk, "The Final Ripoff". That was in 1998. I've not paid for anything but vinyl since. iTunes? HAH. Ten cents a song might get me to try one.The real problem is that the shine has worn off. Music is now something you listen to while you do something else. It doesn't have to be that good. Of course, I'm talking about the general public. There are always the music lovers among us that want it good and will sit and just listen to music a lot.

[Vito Corleone]

They probably said the same thing when they started selling singles on record' date=' or when the radio would only play what was on the top 40 or whatever. I think the album is too engrained in the industry to die completely. However, the art does seem to be dying as a form of connected songs, one flowing into the next like Dark Side of the Moon, especially with alternative methods of distribution like the internet, youtube, etc., and people only picking and choosing what they like.[/quote']

 

Singles and top 40 radio were around before albums.

 

In fact, the first "albums" were collections of 78RPM singles bundled together as an "album". The LP came along later when they figured out how to get good fidelity at slower turntable speeds.

[daddymack]

The 'album' really came out of the Broadway show tune era, when there was a cohesive collection of songs that went from 'point A' to 'point B'...a small stack of 78 rpm records with 2 songs per disc, recreating the show [until my last move, I had 'Oklahoma' in the original '78 rpm album package'; sadly, it met an unkind fate...]...they also did this with opera, to a lesser commercial effect.

Enter the post WWII era, the 50s...softer vinyl, 33.33rpm, 12"", and suddenly the storage and cost of an 'album' went down...and people bit on it...hi-fi...nascent stereophonics...yet, 45rpm singles were still the measure of success...until transistor tech met home stereo and really came into its own, coinciding with the British invasion...followed closely by the 'concept album'...singles fell into the disparaged role of 'radio fodder'...

[Vito Corleone]

The 'album' really came out of the Broadway show tune era' date=' when there was a cohesive collection of songs that went from 'point A' to 'point B'...a small stack of 78 rpm records with 2 songs per disc, recreating the show [until my last move, I had 'Oklahoma' in the original '78 rpm album package'; sadly, it met an unkind fate...']...they also did this with opera, to a lesser commercial effect.

Enter the post WWII era, the 50s...softer vinyl, 33.33rpm, 12"", and suddenly the storage and cost of an 'album' went down...and people bit on it...hi-fi...nascent stereophonics...yet, 45rpm singles were still the measure of success...until transistor tech met home stereo and really came into its own, coinciding with the British invasion...followed closely by the 'concept album'...singles fell into the disparaged role of 'radio fodder'...

 

Yes. Most of the first LP albums were little more than ways to squeeze more cash from an artists most ardent fans. An act would have a big hit single or two, and they'd rush out a full album with the hits and a bunch of filler. Often cover tunes. The idea of an artist taking the album seriously developed over time, but wasn't really until the mid-60s that it became the focal point for the artist and their fans.

 

So we're pretty much back to that pre-Sgt. Pepper's era where it's about the single and the radio play and you gotta follow up the last single with a new one almost immediately if you want to stay relevant and no one much cares about the rest of your "album".

 

I imagine we'll get to the point where artists don't even release albums anymore (if we aren't there already). If there's no real physical format for it, then there's really no point to the "album". Everyone just puts together their own playlists anyway. If you can't control how it is consumed, then you don't really have an "album".

 

This will have it's good points and bad points, of course. On the bad side, we will lose the depth and variety that an artist will be able to explore when they are no longer trying to create a 40 minute long product. On the good side, they'll work more on creating "hits". Which sounds shallow on one hand, but on the other---that was the construct that the great songwriters of the pre-album were usually working under. They didn't have the luxury of writing a bunch of filler material. Everything they worked was with the purpose of it being a hit.

 

[daddymack]

I have to agree that absent the need for a physical unit, the idea of an album is going to die. The ability to put ten thousand songs in a portable digital playback unit made this an inevitable eventuality.

 

Why bear the cost of manufacturing an EP or full CD when digital is what people are buying? Sadly, mp3 audio is becoming the accepted format, despite its limitations. But the world has changed...95% of music is listened to via earbuds anyway...and group listening is done through 1 & 2" speakers and 4" woofers...yada yada...music is now a disposable commodity.

[Vito Corleone]

Sadly' date=' mp3 audio is becoming the accepted format, despite its limitations. But the world has changed...95% of music is listened to via earbuds anyway...and group listening is done through 1 & 2" speakers and 4" woofers...yada yada...music is now a disposable commodity.[/quote']

 

It always has been. I hear a lot of complaints about the "limitations" of mp3, but that's not what is changing anything. The "golden age" of listening and the album was driven primarily by transistor radios, Close-and-Play type phonographs and AM radio fidelity through a crappy car speaker. Later we "progressed" to Walkmans and Boom-boxes.

 

Hi-fi listening was always just a subset of the huge music market that was 95% people listening to music in a convenience-first format.

 

What's changed is the cultural experience of music and listening. I can remember things like a friend of mine being the first kid in the neighborhood to buy the new Eagles album (Hotel California) so him bringing it over to my house so I could hear it and talking about what we liked and didn't like about it compared to their earlier stuff. Pulling into the school parking lot in my car with the new Boston album (Don't Look Back) cranked up and my friends all sticking their heads in the car windows the check it out.

 

Years later I can remember working at retail and having to deal with hundreds of people lined up around the block so they could buy the new Guns n Roses album (Use Your Illusion) at midnight. Now? Everybody can just download whatever whenever. So it's really hard to make any new release something special or exciting.

 

A lot of things have changed both culturally and technologically that altered the way we consume music and our relationship to it. But frankly, I think the "limitations of mp3 audio" have very, very little---if anything---to do with it. If anything, like you pointed out, it's the ADVANTAGES of the format---10,000 songs on a small device; can download a song in seconds---that have had the greatest impact.

[Lord Lav]

I think we're back to the 60's again where it's all about singles. I'm actually very pro NOW and this internet age. We no longer live in a mono-culture and something can be listened to multi-million times and still there is a huge chunk of people that have never heard of it unlike the 60's or 70's etc.... If something had that much traction everyone knew about it because everyone got their info, news etc from the same place.

 

There are advantages and disadvantages. The bar has been lowered dramatically as to who can participate. All you really need is a laptop and an internet connection to put something up for the world to see. This is great, as you don't need to wait for gatekeepers to pick you like before, HOWEVER we have a ton more clutter to cut through for the exact same reason and in that sense it's just as hard to get noticed and arguably nothing has changed at all.

 

Overall I think if you're an artist that is flexible and willing to put in the work to find your audience yourself off your own back, then there's no better time to be an artist than now!

[Phil O'Keefe]

A lot of it is the cultural perceptions of what music is all about. The combination of changing technologies and reduced attention spans results in the album having no real place in the lives of most people. Who is going to spend 40 minutes just LISTENING to music in 2014?

 

Good point, but I think it goes even deeper than that.

 

Back in the heyday of the LP, the typical running time for an album was around thirty minutes. The maximum you could fit per side was around 22 minutes - after that, compromises have to be made in the disk cutting that negatively impact the sound quality.

 

In the CD era, suddenly that time constraint was no longer a factor, so you started seeing records that ran longer on average... 50, 60 minutes or even more. That meant that listening to an album all the way through required even more of the listener's time... right at the time when attention spans were starting to decrease and other things were starting to come in to favor that vied for the consumer's leisure time - computers and the Internet, video games, etc. etc.

 

IMO, shorter albums are a better idea than really long ones if you want to try to get the public to pay attention to them again. Delete the fluff and so-so material and only go with the best of the best that you have to present. You're probably still going to be fighting an uphill battle in terms of mass acceptance, but IMO the album is still an interesting and viable artistic format when implemented well, if not necessarily a commercial one.

[ckoehler]

I think releasing singles is way to go to stay in front of your audience. That said, why not do both?

 

You can still release them as an album after a set amount. I did that for a year (I wrote about it here - http://musicgoat.com/?p=5058). I noticed that some of the "super fans" bought the singes and then bought the album (and or CD).

 

Also, it all depends on your audience. If your a young group with young fans, you guys probably do not know what an album is (just kidding... kinda). But if you have baby boomers and gen x music fans (like me), we still like to give albums a spin (nothing like finding a kick ass deep track).

[Phil O'Keefe]

That's a great article Corey!

 

 

[Vito Corleone]

 

Good point, but I think it goes even deeper than that.

 

Back in the heyday of the LP, the typical running time for an album was around thirty minutes. The maximum you could fit per side was around 22 minutes - after that, compromises have to be made in the disk cutting that negatively impact the sound quality.

 

In the CD era, suddenly that time constraint was no longer a factor, so you started seeing records that ran longer on average... 50, 60 minutes or even more. That meant that listening to an album all the way through required even more of the listener's time... right at the time when attention spans were starting to decrease and other things were starting to come in to favor that vied for the consumer's leisure time - computers and the Internet, video games, etc. etc.

 

IMO, shorter albums are a better idea than really long ones if you want to try to get the public to pay attention to them again. Delete the fluff and so-so material and only go with the best of the best that you have to present. You're probably still going to be fighting an uphill battle in terms of mass acceptance, but IMO the album is still an interesting and viable artistic format when implemented well, if not necessarily a commercial one.

I really agree with all of this.

 

It's long been my assertion that, in spite of the initial boon to the industry that CDs were, that CDs, more than anything, were what killed the album format. Not only did the smaller size and plastic cases remove the romantic attachment that LPs had (making the music simply 'product' more than ever before) but, as you say, shorter albums are better. Bands released 60-70 minute albums just because they now could, and few of them are "classic". Most just have way too much filler.

 

I also think there was something about splitting the album into two 20 minute "sides" that made for a better listening experience as well. Human brains comprehend things better in small doses.

 

Hence, the 3 minute single.