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February 21, 2007
The death of the album
Bob Lefsetz says the album is dead and we should all be focusing on singles now. Do you think he’s right?
This is something I’ve been thinking about for years, and something that nags at my soul every time Disc Makers sends me one of their slick drool-inducing catalogs. Sometimes it’s a reality I really don’t want to accept. No triple-gatefold artwork? No sequencing of songs? Just push the MP3 out and move on?
It feels…cheap. But also I know that’s just me getting old. CDs may not be in the grave yet, but I know that digital is where the real action is. Sometimes I think the “but people still want artwork and liner notes!” is a lie we musicians tell ourselves.
There’s a validation that comes from making an album (where “album” means both “physical product” and “collection of songs”). Artists want to release them because having an album still makes us feel legitimate. And that sucks, because it puts making a record into roughly the same category as buying a SuperBowl ad — it feels like you’re accomplishing something but what you’re really doing is showing how good you are at spending money.
Personally, I don’t have a lot of money, so my choice is obvious. But it’s hard to set aside that desire, especially when the rest of the industry (namely, press and radio) hasn’t really caught up and still expects albums.
Not that indie musicians should care much about “the industry,” right?
In other words, it used to be that you made an album for the fans, because it’s what they wanted and they didn’t have a choice anyway. Today you’re primarily making it for yourself, the “industry” and the dwindling population who still prefer albums.
Not sure if I’m making a point or just riffing here. Personally, I haven’t bought a physical CD in years.
I don’t personally care much about liner notes and stuff; most CDs I buy get ripped and encoded the moment I get ‘em, and never see an actual CD player. To me, a good album is more than a collection of songs, it’s an artistic vision of the band.
The iTunes revolution saddens me, because suddenly everyone’s happy to pick up the book and read a chapter or two, but nobody reads the whole book anymore.
I was listening to Death Cab For Cutie’s “Transatlanticism” the other day, and it really struck me as a great *album*. They stuck the epic song “Transatlanticism” right in the middle, and framed the entire album around it. The whole is so much more powerful than the sum of its parts.
I keep toying with the idea of giving up on physical CDs, but still releasing “albums”. Then again, even though I offer .ZIP files of entire albums, I look at my stats on Last.FM and it doesn’t seem that anyone actually listens that way. Maybe I need to start releasing albums as one giant MP3. *grins*
I know it’s unfashionable of me to say so, but, well, no — I don’t think “the album” is dead. I rarely listen to individual tracks. If I’m paying money for music, I want some physical proof of ownership; I’m not comfortable paying for an intangible product. I don’t (and won’t) buy music files online; give me a nice lossless CD with some information about the music that I can put on my shelf, rip however I like, or lend to a friend any day.
(I am something of a Luddite here, though. I still buy LPs.)
Lefsetz’s post seems more to be a screed about the preponderance of bad music in the modern world, rather than the inherent badness of the album format. Yes, if an album is 70% filler then I’m more likely to buy the singles I like instead — but if a band’s turning out albums that are that bad then I’m not going to be interested in their work anyway.
A good album is worth more than its component songs even if it’s not a “concept” album, and I think Lefsetz misses that. (After all, the single has been around longer than the album has, and yet the album has survived for some fifty years so far — the term “album” comes from the cardboard sleeve that held a bunch of 5-minute 78s…)
I agree with the above… the album as a thematic, well-composed collection of songs is alive and well, even if the physical medium is going away. I do sometimes read the liner notes of albums I’m particularly interested in (or if the liner notes are another part of the story) but I can’t remember the last time I played a CD in a CD player. The closest I came was playing The Beatles: Love in my DVD player to hear the 5.1 master (which I did just for the novelty of a 5.1 master; the stereo master was MUCH better).
Sometimes it’s really tempting to just sell high-bitrate mp3s/FLACs/etc. of the songs I’ve finished mastering “for my next album” (which I’ve been working on for like 5 years now, and on an almost yearly basis it seems like I restart on it) but that feels like a total cop-out. On the other hand, it might be helpful to keep the creative juices flowing because then I don’t have to be caught up on silly things like writing 45 minutes of music to fill out the theme. Maybe I should switch to producing EPs instead, since right now that’s how “my album” feels (two or three separate 15-minute EPs, each of which I want to flesh out into a full album but I don’t think that’s going to happen).
Without the album, though, we wouldn’t get gems like Plat’s “Ask A Stupid Question.” And also even things like Coulton’s “thing-a-week” series, it’s single-oriented but still tends to emerge as an album as it goes. And even with, say, Song Fight, where there’s no unifying theme behind the songs other than the title, it’s a much more satisfying listening experience when you listen to it the whole way through (even if the order is as arbitrary as alphabetical or whatever).
I buy physical CDs at least once a month. I rarely buy a single MP3. I’m really old, so I’m kinda into physical objects, but also, I jones for liner notes. If the MP3 doesn’t tell me who played what, include the lyrics, and the artist’s comments on the songs, I’m less interested.
And most albums are about (at some level) a place in the artist’s life. I want a cohesive set of music, not a single song that’s not connected to something else.
Singles are permanent; they’ve been around forever. But albums are permanent, too. Music has to connect to stuff to mean anything to me, and when it connects to more music by the same artist, that makes me happy.
Oh, another thing: I’ve actually never bought a single, except one which was bundled with something else (which was kind of common with some of the Asian music I bought when I was going through that phase several years ago). I’ve never paid money for a song off the iTMS (I’ve downloaded several of the “free music tuesday” singles though).
Recently I’ve kind of considered buying a couple of pop songs as singles because some of them are actually pretty good songs buried in otherwise crappy albums, and that’s where iTMS is really taking off. Of course, as much as I want a legal copy of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” (which is actually a pretty good song, IMO) I refuse to buy something which is encumbered by DRM and tied to [insert device class I own at time of purchase].
I’m the opposite of everyone commenting I guess.
I grew up buying and listening to Wish You Were Here, Quadrophenia, and hell, even trying to make sense of the what made The White Album a unified piece of work.
But I also grew up listening to CKLW. Recording reel-to-reel (!) and shortly, cassette mixes staight from the radio. (Sorry Scott, WMMS couldn’t be picked up in Erie PA.)
When the late 80s hit and the local college stations got REALLY good - it wasn’t those “concept album” sets that had me tune in. It was the singles.
I rebuilt y 400+ album collection with 200+ CDs. Sold all of my albums in the meantime.
I rebuilt my 200+ CD collection with digital MP3s and iTUnes DRM downloads. And pretty much sold my CDs after ripping them into iTunes.
For the last 4 years I’ve rarely listened to an atual CD, since I prefer the songlist I can create. Sure some of them contain MY sets of a particular artist. But they never stick to what that artist would want me to sequence.
One last thing… several of Scott’s songs have a high playcount in my library. I’m in my 40s… turing 50 in just over a year… and content to say my music is all digital anymore, and my song lists are mine and not what any artist thinks it should be.
Scott - that last statement can sound harsh to you. It’s not meant that way.
I learned that 80% of the time I listen to music I really do prefer to not have that song I don’t “get” or “want” to intrude on what I’m listening. I’m not someone who got into “pop” music way back when - and dammit people good commercial Motown is NOT pop! :-)
Sure, there’s the other 20% of my time - time when I’ll listen to something new, or listen to a full release as I chose to download it. But that is not how I normally listen, or download anymore.
That guy in the article is full of shit in that he apparently only cares what the 3-CD-a-year (or now, the “X” amountof songs off of ITunes-a-year crowd) buys or listens to. There’s tons of bands still selling between 10,000 and 50,000 albums a year, whether a physical copy or off ITunes, with fanbases that still do absorb the album as an artistic statement. As long as there are songwriters, there’s going to be bigger formats than just the single song to work with, and there’s going to be people who want to take in the work as such. What if authors gave up writing because most people just read magazines? I don’t think it’s healthy at all to come out and decllare “the album is dead!” and tell songwriters just to work on one song at a time. Who’s this guy anyway?
And there I was, seriously considering making my next collection of recorded songs into a concept album… :-) (Well, probably a loose one like The Divine Comedy’s “Promenade”, and that’s if I ever get round to recording it in the first place.) But seriously…
‘Singles’ vs ‘albums’? I think it’s a bit of a false choice, especially in the era of digital music files and playlists. It’s never been easier to create your own sequence of tracks on your player of choice, and even better, you’re not limited to the 80 minutes of a CD-R (great for massive classical works like the Bach St Matthew Passion - 3 CDs, and 3 hours of music in one playlist - joy!). But then you can also stick with the sequence the artist offers - it’s entirely your choice, and that’s the best part of it for me.
So, when I do get round to laying down that next album, maybe I’ll sell it as an enhanced CD AND a set of MP3s/Oggs/FLACs (or just give the things away - depends on how much I spend on them!).
BTW: Scott, I’ll have to check out the outfit you sell your tracks through (PayLoadz) - looks very handy…
As Jimmy Cliff would say: “Give the people what they want”.
Want to make an album? Spend the time and money to do it.
Want to sell singles? Do it.
Some people want just a few songs? Let them download the singles.
Some people want the album? Then let em have that too.
I’m what Sam (above) would call part of the ‘mix tape’ generation - loving as many different genres and styles that can be crammed into one listening session. However, no radio show provides as much personal joy as a good ‘Perfect Album Side Sunday’. Maybe its just because that’s where I first heard GD’s Working Man’s Dead… and Bob Dylan’s Desire, and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, etc…
Hell, the working man’s never going away, and never is the concept of ‘the collection’.
Thinking about it that way, I guess we’re on the right track.
As Jimmy Cliff would continue: “peace, love, and no pollution”
Jimmy Cliff also said,”It seems like I’m caught in your trap again…” Did you know people were arguing about the death of the single when albums started being prominent? Critics said rock n’ roll acts were putting too much filer on and should only release 45’s. There’s always someone…
My knee-jerk reaction to statements like that is always that, no, the album is certainly not dead. But then I have to remind myself that I’ve bought probably less than 10 CDs in the past 3-4 years, which is way, way down from the days when I used to buy 2-3 CDs a WEEK and sometimes even more.
But really, for me it has nothing to do with digital downloads. I haven’t made up the difference in stuff I’ve bought online. There just isn’t that much that I’m interested in buying. I think part of that has to do with getting older and having less time to explore and find new stuff that I’m into. But it’s pretty rare that I’m excited by anything new these days.
Also, I’ll say that all of our fans still buy our music on CDs. We actually just released an EP as a download-only thing and we got a lot of feedback from people who wanted an actual CD.
So I think it really depends on the type of fanbase you have.
I think certainly over the next several years, you’re going to see a lot of major “artists” straying away from the album and more towards the downloadable singles and ringtones. But you’re also gonna see a lot more smaller bands releasing full length albums as both digital downloads and CDs.
The thing that excites me about that idea is that the people who want CDs, really want something cool and are usually willing to pay a little more when they know the money is going straight to the band. This opens up some opportunities to do really cool “limited edition” packaging in shorter runs… sell it for more of a premium price, maybe include some other cool bonus material… and still be able to sell your music to anyone in the world, digitally and right from your own website, without any DRM or corporate middle men.