For the past few weeks, I’ve been leaning dangerously close to scrapping my album project.

I don’t want to scrap the songs. I’m pretty excited about them and there’s no way I’m going to throw away all that hard work. But I’m starting to think that my decision to hole up and work on a “traditional” album release was an unwise move, for a number of reasons:

• I’m constantly stressing over the track order
• I’m constantly stressing over things like artwork, packaging, etc.
• I’m constantly stressing over song quality (trying to avoid anything that could be perceived as dreaded “filler”) and obsessing over details I never paid much attention to before
• I’m constantly stressing over conflicting schedules and studio time (no offense to Jim, who has been awesome to work with and infinitely patient with me)
• I’m constantly stressing over how to pay for it all

Notice a theme here?

On top of it all, I feel like I can’t really release anything fresh or spontaneous because I’m supposed to be working on my album. Songs like Valentines and Rusty just kind of happened — they weren’t even part of the album plan, and it feels weird telling people “the new record is on the way! Just a little bit longer! Hang in there! — oh, by the way, here are some brand new songs that won’t be on it.”

It was that spontenaeity that worked so well for me when I first started posting music to this blog. Now I feel my creative momentum has been derailed, partly because I allowed the idea that an album release is the “professional” way of doing things into my head.

I’m still going to release a physical CD, because due to the style of music I write, a good chunk of my audience still uses CDs. But I’m torn over how much more time and energy to sink into an album. Everything else in the music world is moving online. Not just the act of listening, but also radio, distribution, marketing, commentary and criticism, licensing, etc. and being reduced to smaller and smaller chunklets.

It seems to me that one day soon the only reason to do an album format release is to impress the Old Guard of big broadcast radio, print media, labels, etc. And really, since when do I give a crap about all that?

So here’s what I’m thinking: throw the “album” concept in the trash, finish recording the songs with Jim, release them as singles on the website. Maybe use a ratings system so listeners can mark songs as favorites. Eventually the popular ones will bubble to the top and those get released on a CD later this year.

Can you think of any reasons why I should stick with an album release?

Previously: Ye Olde Metal Days

Next: D4!