Slashdot Mirror
Record Labels Struggle With the Album's Demise
Supplying yet more evidence, if more were needed, of the dire straits the music business increasingly finds itself in — reader cphilo sends us a NYTimes article about the death of the album as the mainstay of profit, and the record labels' struggle to adopt to the new realities. The article notes the trend of the labels signing artists for a single song, maybe two, and a ring tone.
Yeah, the LP is pretty much toasted. It's a fairly limited market now, made up of DJs and insane people. Good example!
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The reason why sales are down on albums is cause they were always inflated in the past. They used to sell CD singles at full price (lets say $10), the album that would follow later in time (also priced at $10) with a total sale of $20. Now you can buy the single for a $1 and if you want the full CD for $10, with a difference of $9, thats where alot of the profit has been lost. Those are just made up numbers but it gets the point across.
It seems to me that they went out of their way to kill the album. You can select almost any album from the Big Four[Sony BMG, EMI, Universal, Warner] these days and pick out which 2-3 songs they will release on radio and make videos for, and which 10 are utter crap just there to fill the CD.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
It's what happens when the businesses neglect their customers for too long.
Who'd pay $10 - $15 for a CD of third rate material with effects and dynamic range compression 'compensating' for lack of artist talent?
Over exposed, radio played acts are the only ones who need to sign two song contracts and make it into the top twenty. I still enjoy entire albums, from REAL artists. Of course, I'm a fan of concept albums... Maybe if more musicians made their albums one cohesive piece of art we wouldn't have these problems. Oh wait, our short attention span guarantee that we would.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I'll just start by saying that I'm a musician and a music lover and that an album that is put together as a piece of art is a beautiful thing - but just like any art that's put together for commercial purposes, an album that's designed as a vehicle for a few singles and some filler songs isn't.
Not every artist has the ability to release 50-70 minutes of truly compelling art, and most of the buying public is more than happy to listen to singles. Conversely, some artists seem to be constricted by the 78 minute limit of CDs.
It would be a good thing if the music industry was flexible enough to let artists release what they wanted (or wanted to sell) in whatever format (in terms of single/EP/album) as opposed to this 2-years = new full-length album mentality, some artists might like to release a single every few months, while some release an EP every year and others an album every few years.
"damnit, trolley I want in your signature." - Elburrito
The music industry used to be BUILT on the sales of singles. It really wasn't until the mid-to-late 80s that they started focusing on trying to sell entire albums.
It was the CD that did it. The "coolness" of CDs made everyone kind-of forget about singles, and how handy they were. And they were more expensive, which the record companies obviously loved. Yeah, they did/do sell CD singles, but it's obvious that they don't want anyone to buy them. They're overpriced, and there aren't many of them available.
But at this point, CDs are NOT cool. They're old and busted, and dull. And they're STILL expensive. More expensive.
The record companies just can't give it up, though. They had this 20-year-run of making WAY more money than they had any right to (thanks to the CD revolution), but now it's over, and they're trying to freeze the clock.
I guess what I'm saying is this: if this industry collapses and the "artists" starve to death, I won't give a shit, because they're not artists. I know real artists and they have my love and support, and yes, that's financial support, because their CDs kick ass.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What do you expect, they raised the prices when they brought out CDs with the promise that once the technology get efficient the price would come down. Then later. They kept raising the price (even for older tunes, try to buy something good form a pop band in the 80s, usually still $17).
So people are limited to choose either:
- an inflated new album price ($17+)
- a reasonable priced album if bought used ($10 or less, but no added profit to music biz)
- buying only the (good) songs people want on-line ($2 to $4 depending on artist, sometimes only $1)
- Of course this is very limited people have to have the right computer, OS, listening devices, etc.
- tape off the air ($0, low quality) digitize etc.
- piracy ($0 low karma)
The obvious would be to actually make the albums more affordable, but that seems way beyond the concept of the music industry.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Or just make better music.
In other news, morse code telegraph service operators are having a hard time coping with the advent of the telephone. Let's make a bunch of government regulations to help them continue their out-moded services that nobody wants anymore!
Anyway, I'm not paying $1/song - much less $8 for a song. There is not a song on the planet I would pay $8 for. What you're talking about is subsidizing shit by charging an enormous amount for the gold.
Another way of thinking about it is this:
How much do you pay to see a movie in the theater? Do you pay more to see 300 or Zodiac than you pay for Wild Hogs? Nope.
I rarely listen to one entire album. In most, there are a few good songs I like and I'll add those to my playlist, in addition to particular songs from others.
For the one night wonders, maybe - but not for *real* musicians.
Take banks like Jethro Tull or Pink Floyd for example. Listening to one song doesn't really mean anything, you have to listen to entire albums to make sense of things.
Hell, I was just at a G3 concert last night - Joe Satriani, John Petrucci (with Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater) and Paul Gilbert. It was a good three hours of excellent guitar and good music. If you heard any of Satriani's or Steve Vai's albums, you'd realize that listening to the whole thing is very different from listening to just one song.
Now, I really do not know about other genres such as pop/hip-hop/rap/R&B but as far as I know, there are still some good musicians out there whose entire albums are a joy to listen to.
Hell, that's why good bands still have folks buying their music. It's not because I cannot download their songs online, but it's because they make good music and I'd like to support them, even if they are small, local bands.
In fact, the last band that I linked to, Eddie from Ohio, is not signed up with any record label and yet do really well. Shows you what quality can achieve.
Then again, I probably do not make a very good sample of the typical CD-buying demographic.
As I mentioned in another topic, I think this is insane but apparently the RIAA thinks CDs should cost $34 each due to inflation...
Ridiculous. $10 I paid gladly, $12 was ok, but when every album costs $17+, I ain't buying.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
I personally love albums. Even if it's not a "concept" record, it still displays a moderate range of ideas, if it's not a shit band, and can be fun to just put on and lie around and listen to.
But what I HATE more than anything are all these "indie" bands making epic prog-rock or quiet folk albums of boring, repetitive music as a reaction to the death of the album. Dear sweet lord, I know that the idea of singles isn't that great, but an entire album without any single songs on it is even worse.
I'm looking at you, Mars Volta. And you two, Bright Eyes. Putting people to sleep is not entertainment or art.
I think it's the advertising that stymies people.
You're right: actually producing a fairly good "album" (which, in today's world, means a few songs, sometimes related in some way, generally involving the same principal musicians) really isn't that hard, if you have talent. It's a few thousand dollar ordeal at most, and you could probably do a passable job -- equal to professional job a few decades ago -- with equipment most people have plus a few hundred bucks. (Again, assuming talent. But there are a lot of talented amateurs out there.)
But where I've seen band after band falter, is in the advertising and promotion. It's getting the songs and the name of the band out to potential listeners in the first place -- that's the one place where the labels still have an advantage over most independent efforts. They pick a few bands that they think match what people want to hear, and promote them aggressively, pushing them on the radio, on MTV, on shows like Saturday Night Live, and get the songs into advertisements and movies where they get exposure.
Online and 'viral' marketing have helped some bands, but viral marketing is tough to "do" effectively. There's no real recipe that you can run through and have it work. In contrast, as the 90's "manufactured pop" demonstrated, you can get people to listen to anything if you just promote the living hell out of it, day in and day out.
In time, I think the labels are going to fade, but it's going to take a long time and they're not going to go quietly. Technology -- cheap DAW software, CD burners, and inexpensive ADC interfaces -- have lowered the barrier to entry involved in actually recording music. But letting people know that you exist as a band, and getting your songs out to the people who might want to pay for it (or come to a concert, buy a t-shirt, etc.), is still tough, and the labels have some advantages left.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Son, you tried too hard, and it just ain't funny when you try too hard. Sorry 'bout that.
Can't say I pity the RIAA: I used to buy CDs for $11 a piece and kept thinking that the prices would surely come down (market forces, supply and demand, right?) At $17 I think not just twice, but five times about buying a disc because it's obviously been a planned rip-off all these years.
Along comes the internet and a new way of getting the word out and distributing music. Does the RIAA take advantage of lower (read: "nil") media costs? Do they dance with joy at all the chance of ridiculously low advertisement costs? Do they use P2P as a kind-of word of mouth mechanism? No, they sue us. Really f---ing bright idea, that, and then they wonder why I vote with my money and buy absofriggenlutely *nothing* anymore from any artist associated with the RIAA? Sheesh!
Not sure what the IAA stands for but I know the 'R' stands for 'Retarded'.
--Udo.
Some people like bands that do concept albums, some people don't.
They're two entirely different styles of music. It's like the difference between a symphony written for full orchestra and something written for a four-part chamber ensemble. I don't think that many people would really argue that the orchestral piece is inherently 'superior,' in any sort of quantifiable way besides personal taste, to the chamber piece, they're just different. (And, more to the point, many composers have written for both.) It's as bizarre as saying that novelists are inherently "better" writers than essayists, because they produce longer stories. It doesn't make sense.
The three- to four-minute "song" has proved to be an incredibly popular format for popular music over the last century, and I don't think you can chalk that up entirely to the machinations of the RIAA (which, let's face it, was a pretty benign organization until fairly recently) or the "music industry." Probably a lot of credit goes to radio, but if people really hated individual songs, there's no way they'd be as popular as they are.
It's a format people enjoy, and there's nothing inherently better or worse about it than a long album. To be honest, I'd argue that an artist that could communicate effectively in either format was probably better at their trade than one who's mostly restricted themselves to either 70-minute concept albums or 3-minute ditties, but it's really an academic point.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually, I think it's a bit unfair to compare the RIAA and the MPAA in one regard--they both charge about the same. CDs are $17 and DVDs $20 or so--but the movie on the DVD cost tens of millions of dollars to make. The CD couldn't possibly have cost more than a few million.
But you see, $20 is the sweet spot. It's a proven threshold below which people don't notice or care in the same way that they do above that level (conveniently, many tax assessments are attached in little $15 intervals to minimize protest), so the entertainment providers try to snuggle as close to that limit as possible to maximize their profits.
But at least the movie makers have legitimate costs. CDs are almost as expensive as DVDs, and concerts are certainly more expensive than movie tickets. You've got to wonder how the RIAA rationalizes that.
I don't mind paying $15 for a DVD. I'm much less thrilled about spending $15 on a CD that's half as long and cost an order of magnitude less to produce.
Bingo. For a large portion of the population, and probably for a majority of the dollars being spent on music, a song's quality is a function of the frequency with which they're hearing it and the places they're hearing it from. Being a part of a niche market is no good because few people go out of their way to find good music, they wait for it to come to them.
On the other hand the blunt force trauma method of assaulting the listener via repetitive radio plays, television promos, etc, conveys to the listener that this is "the new song" from "the new band", and instantly adds a level of perceived quality to the music because certainly it is impossible that everybody would be going crazy about this new band unless they were pretty good...right? And if this unknown band was any good they'd be heard on a mainstream source by now...right?
No one gives a second thought that a musician might not want to alter their art to suit the "lowest common denominator" market that popular music must appeal to. Luckily we are quickly moving to a system where good music can find you on the Internet even if you're hardly trying, and the public will inadvertently relieve the RIAA of its stranglehold and abusive domination of not an industry, but a form of art and human expression.
audioLibre - freedom of music
Bands used to get signed, for example, to a 3-album contract, spanning a few years. But now the music biz wants to/needs to be able to dump artists fast, so now they're switching to contracts for only a couple of songs and a ringtone. I.e. temp workers -- no commitment, no loyalty, no being able to call a company or label your "home". Because no one really wants you, for anything other than just a casual, short-term relationship. Forget "careers" in the recording industry.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
If the "hit" costs $8 and you like 3 other songs for $1 each, you'll gladly pay $10 for the album.
... We just don't have any cash left lying about for an impulse purchase of high priced music.
Umm No. Raising the single to $8 would kill any chance of me buying the single. Actualy for me raising the price makes no change.
There are four things that limit my purchases of the singles.
1 DRM -- It's incompatible with all my players except a Windows PC. In CD format, it may break your computer. Even my flash player will not play any WMA DRM format or iTunes files. Anti-rip copy protection simply means it's incompatible.
2 Quality -- Audio is compressed to sound loud. Dyanamic range is killed.
3 Price -- Lack of value. There is a market for used CD's. DRM downloads are worthless.
4 Competition -- I don't mean piracy (a factor), but I can spend my entertainment dollar on a new flatscreen TV, new graphics card, new Core 2 Duo PC, Broadband Internet, Cell Phone, Pocket PC, DVD's, better Car, Gas,
The truth shall set you free!
it's unfortunately rare to find an LP that really follows through
Ridiculous. Get out of the current mainstream and there are literally thousands of such LPs, if not tens of thousands.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
> It's a fairly limited market now, made up of DJs and insane people.
I resemble that remark because not only do I have thousands of LPs, I own and sell high end turntables, tonearms, cartridges and accessories. And hey, guess what, the market demand is steady, albeit not large.
It's kind of funny how things have come full circle after all these years of the CD being touted as "perfect sound forever". CD players and the like have become very, very good compared with what we had 20 years or more ago, though. Some contenders for state of the art in CD playback feature USB inputs; ironically a new one I have coming soon that has a USB input uses new old stock tubes in the output stage.
Yes, it is the music snob in you. To use an irrefutable example, just look at The Beatles. Just because they were marketed out the ass and probably thrust into the spotlight a little early doesn't make them a poor band. What it did do is expose them to a larger audience. Most people in the US wouldn't have known about The Beatles without marketing, no matter how good they were. Look at a band like The Kinks, who weren't marketed in the US and have almost no name recognition among average people here, even if they were just as good as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, etc. So yes, good bands will probably survive and endure without marketing, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing. Most of the great artists of all time were over-marketed. To stay with the British theme, the bands I listed above probably wouldn't have even formed if it wasn't for American blues and rock and roll being sold to them by the record companies. Just because the record companies try and push complete shit a lot of the time doesn't mean that the concept of marketing and selling music itself is bad.
As someone who was there (I was nine when Please Please me came out) I saw just what they did. Sure, the first two albums were effectively boy band albums but once you get to Rubber Soul and Revolver then they're far, far more than that. It's also difficult from this perspective to understnd the impact of Sgt Pepper, an album you cannot, under any circumstances write off as a 'boy band' album. Suddenly popular music was being treated with respect, reviews in the London Times for example, and the musicians treated as artists.
Whatever you think of their sound they were as ground breaking as Elvis or Sinatra and without them you wouldn't have the music you have today.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
This is precisely why places like Youtube are full of talentless, amateurish rubbish. The recording industry has, over the years, obliterated any incentive for talent by its corrupt methods. Only half-arsed tunesmiths with "connections" and mediocre musicians are getting work in the music industry, by and large - their work is tweaked, retouched, and canned. If you could taste it, it would taste like imitation Spam. People with real musical talent are frequently not in the business at all. Those that have had some nurturing are not using their abilities in public (no money in it). Instead they are holding day jobs and playing musical instruments/having their jam sessions at home in the evenings to relax.
As a result, the recording industry can't find talent (because it killed it off) and is stuck with ring tones and other crap.
If we kill off their business model (fingers crossed), then maybe people will once again appreciate the value of live performances and music will become an event, an experience, not merely the auditory equivalent of fast food.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
You might (this is just a theory I have ...) be looking at things the wrong way. I wonder - have the music industry hoist themselves on their own petard?
For a long time from the beginning, singles were the lifeblood of the music industry. Songwriters, musicians, and performers were effectively the property of the record studio, indentured to turn out song after song after song after song. Take the next song off the pile from the songwriters, throw the studio musicians at it, and stand the current / next voice and face of the week up front to make the next single. Get enough together, and a studio could rotate them fast enough to have two or more different singles on the go each week - one at its peak, one on the way up, and another waiting behind it.
Young 'ns may not know this, but in the first heyday of the record industry - the 50's and 60's - people didn't have album collections - they had singles collections.
But then, somewhere around the late 50's - early 60's, the industry noticed that people became attached to artists - not songs, and not the studios. Studios took advantage of this, and started releasing whole albums of content - firstly as a compilation of hits, then adding a couple of new songs (which became the new singles for the next couple of weeks). What they didn't forsee was this slowing down the sales of singles. Eventually, to recapture those lost sales, artists - self contained artists, who could write & record their own stuff - were given a slightly longer leash; long enough to do their own thing with whole albums of content and build an even more loyal fanbase.
Loyalty to the artist had replaced loyalty to the studio. And there was much rejoicing...
Slightly later - it started in the mid-late 60's, hitting its stride in the 70's - the music industry realised that, despite the added $$$ they were getting up front from selling whole albums, this actually had the effect of slowing sales revenue. Sure, a top-selling album raked it in big to start with - but, with very few exceptions, there was a huge initial peak followed by a quick decline and long tail. Further causing grief was the fact that by the time they got around to releasing the next lot of singles from an album, most potential purchasers already owned it - and so were lost to the market.
Come the rise of the "2 good songs + 10 tracks of filler" album. This was the best of both worlds for the studios - 2 singles to sell + just enough reason for people to pay the extra for the album = single sales + album sales + a short "hot" time so they could rotate the next "big thing" into place quickly to start the whole cycle again.
Now, quickly ffwd to "modern" times. People are wise to the "2+10" formula of the average album, and are sick of it. Worse still, from the studios POV, they now have an alternative that shortcuts both the "release lots of singles quickly" and "release whole albums" formula - an alternative that started underground with IRC & FTP sites, hit the big time with Napster, was kept alive post-Napster by Kazaa/Limewire/Bearshare/etc, and continues today in the form of BT. The studios are struggling with the loss of singles and the loss of albums.
Where to now?
One obvious niche choice - ringtones. It's almost a new version of the singles formula - take lots of songs with "I want it now!" appeal, whack a top-dollar price on them, make them ridiculously simple to buy without the purchaser seeing the money leave their hands (until the next phone bill), and turn 'em over fast.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
There has been a fairly distinct split in popular music acts for some while. Singles acts, who can knock out a popular 3 minute song, and album acts, who produce longer, more involved, recordings. Both have their place and both have their suitable formats. Those who complain about albums with 1 or 2 decent songs, and then filler need to be slapped around the head. You're buying the wrong act on the wrong format!! The solution to your complaints are obvious and in your own hands!
And I don't need to hear any more moaning about "there's no decent albums any more". Face facts; you're getting older, your tastes will change. You can't expect the same styles of music to mean the same to you. If you want to hear music that you will enjoy you need to stop listening to the same sources you were listening to 10 years ago. There's just as much decent music as there ever was, you're just looking in the wrong places.
What I find interesting here is that this seems to be largely a self inflicted wound.
As I see it, the problem started with CDs. The record companies want to push CD singles, but no one wanted to play three times the price for two tracks, so the format largely died.
This left DJs as the only people buying singles, so we had charted suddenly dominated by techno dance anthems that probably sound fantastic if you're off your head on a dance floor in Ibiza, but are kind of insane when played on breakfast radio as you're getting ready for work.
So, because the single market is dead, new bands have a harder job breaking into the market. In particular if a band has two good tracks and a couple of bad ones, where once they might have produced a single or maybe two, now they have to make it all into an Album and pad it out with a couple of over-length "dance remix" tracks and hope nobody notices. t.A.T.u spring to mind here.
Making matters worse, the demise of the singles chart as an accurate reflection of public tastes has led to a market increasingly controlled by the labels through channels like MTV. So it isn't like there's a lot of confidence in the quality of these albums, either. The only reason anyone is still buying that, rigged or not there's only one game in town.
Enter the internet. Forget Napster and Kazaar, jsut consider ITunes. People can go and by a track if they like it. Not the whole album. Suddenly hte singles market is back, we have an emerging download chart that looks to again be a reasonable indicator of public interest. We even have good new groups releasing songs under Creative Commons licences, free-to-download and legal.
And the record companies are wondering why no one is interested in albums any more...
[ All the above IMHO based on faulty memory and personal prejudice. Disagreement is welcome; demands for references will be met with mild derision. Thank you for your time ]
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
The Beatles were pretty formulaic in 1963 or 1964.
Their finest hour didn't come until after they stopped touring. Then they wrote good music, every bit as good as The Kinks or the Rolling Stones. They weren't writing catchy 3 minute ditties then (which is perhaps a giveaway this critic wrote this piece in about 1964 or 1965, or perhaps hasn't listened to much Beatles stuff) - they were writing entire albums.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
This argument has become something of a meme in the popular culture. People take for granted that "every album that comes out has only 2 good songs on it, and the rest suck/are filler" without even thinking about it or giving the album a chance and being able to speak with some authority on it. Or perhaps listening to some music critic trash the album and never giving it a chance yourself. As a fan of music in general I am tired of hearing it. It's nothing more than a thinly veiled insult at pop music, often lobbed by Gen X-ers (can I still use that term?) like myself looking back at the music we enjoyed growing up as being somehow better or different. As if back in "my day" we didn't have nearly the same amount of so-called overproduced crap as there is today. Like many people, I grew up listening to pop and then moved on as my tastes expanded.
I guess my point is that if you like a song by a particular artist a lot, you should give their album and/or their wider catalog a good hard look before you decide the other songs are crap. Buy the album, and sit down and give the entire thing a listen. Several times. Not skipping any songs. See what grows on you, if anything. I have listened to full albums by one hit wonders - some of which were actually pretty good, even to the point of lamenting the fact that they were never given a chance. Don't call an album "45 minutes of filler" just because the record companies want you to believe that. They don't want you to enjoy all twelve songs on the album because that means you will savor it a bit longer before buying again. The artist probably takes a different view.
Don't misunderstand, I agree that there is plenty of crap out there written and produced by people without a lot of talent. But there is a lot of legitimately good music out there that never gets a chance because of this old tired argument. Decide for yourself whether the music is any good, not what other people think or want you to believe. How many of us have "guilty pleasures" that we never admit to liking in front of our friends?
Above is nonsense. To historically understand ground breaking music you have to listen to the music before it. There would have been no Kinks, as they sounded, without John Lennon's early rhythm guitar. There would have been no Lennon without Chuck, but the styles are different.
...) and you pass directly through Meet The Beatles.
> it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic
Proving he doesn't play and doesn't know any pop history. Draw a line from Words Of Love (or Johnny B Goode) to Waterloo Sunset (or Quadrophenia or
Above critic snobbery reminds me of some of the (third rate) modern jazz guys dismissing The Hot Fives and Sevens or guitar nerds in the 80s saying Hendrix wasn't 'clean' enough, or JS Bach falling out of fashion. Arguing with a music critic is like arguing sex with a virgin, if he was getting some, he might know something.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.