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Singles, Not Albums, Define Music Industry Success
athloi writes "Despite the tough times for albums, the music industry is slowly but surely learning the most important lesson of all: give consumers what they want, and they happily open their wallets. Digital music sales are a new business and a new way of thinking about and interacting with content. The industry should be paying closer attention to its meteoric rise and less attention to the dying, arcane album. It should absolutely drop the rhetoric about how piracy is destroying the business, because the sea change in sales patterns shows that something else is is afoot. It means that when users are sitting at a computer and looking for music, more and more each year are turning to legal download services."
I like albums.
Singles exist to catch your attention.. the same way commercials are loud and obnoxious. If there isn't the rest of the album, then the only music will be loud and obnoxious "LISTEN TO ME" stuff. The more subtle music will be sacrificed because it doesn't present well on the radio.
Recorded music started out as singles and is going back to that format. The only reason I can see for the album was to promote and justify the 33 1/3 LP format. With digital music, this concept is totally outdated and destined to die. Let me pick what I want and don't tell me what I have to take to get it. It's like buying a the whole Mu Gu Gai Pan meal when all you want from it is the egg rolls. Michael
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
But I think the music industry has known that for about 50 years.
Dear world,
I like albums and have found time after time that the songs not released as singles are even better. Singles are what you hear for free on the radio and during that one hour on MTV/VH1 when they are actually showing videos. Why pay for what you're likely to hear at any given time. Pay for what you're missing and find like I do that there's so much more good stuff on an album.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
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Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
You'd think the music industry would have smartened up by now and started offering custom albums with a customer's favorite songs burned onto them for a small fee over and above the fees for the songs themselves, making a fair profit from getting the customer keen on having a good-sized collection that *he/she* picked out on-line or at a kiosk, on a decent-quality DVD recordable delivered either at said kiosk or at a local shop which owns specialised equipmentfor that. Not everyone wants to have to do this stuff himself/herself with downloaded (and compressed, less than full-quality) songs.
But no, it's all about cramming junk songs down people's throats along with a very few good ones. Greedy pigs.
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I'll be very sad to see albums go away and we are left with a bunch of singles. Albums are like a complete work, singles are merely chapters. Would anyone really prefer a world without albums like Sgt. Pepper, What's Goin' On, It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Electric LadyLand, Dark Side of The Moon, Kind of Blue, Purple Rain, etc, to be replaced by a bunch of singles?
Besides that, I've found that if a single prompts me to listen to the corresponding album, I grow to like the entire album (I know many here say that albums only have one or two good songs, and then filler garbage, but I've not found that to be the case at all; no album that I've ever bought has been like that).
I really don't understand those that celebrate the demise of albums.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Singles are far better value for money (you buy what you want), but are far harder to handle in physical form. Singles on CD etc are a pain for manufacturers (more lower-value titles == more work for less money), record stores (more stock, lower prices,...) and for the listener (changing CDs after each track).
Singles do, however, make a lot of sense in download form. They're easy to manufacture (http) and use (itunes etc) and you only pay for what you want. The people who lose are the labels and record stores since they find it hard to add value any more.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Hmmm, what's a suitable analogy here to illustrate the difference between something that you might casually sing along to a bit when you hear it on the radio/MTV and something that you'll want to be able to enjoy in context whenever you wish? Let's try this...
Singles are like trailers for a film. Albums are the film. There's more genius in a Martin Scorsese production than the 30 seconds you'll see during an ad break. Similarly, there's more genius to the average artist's music than is contained in the radio-friendly, appeal-to-everybody-possible tracks that the record company people decide to release as singles.
Personally, I'd favour a means of online pricing that encouraged people to listen to albums rather than just buy the odd single. I doubt it would appeal to many (or even be possible now that people are used to the current online pricing models), but $4 for a single track, $8 for the album would be fine with me.
I hate the idea that instead of a proper record collection, and a real appreciation for music and song as artforms, kids will grow up to have nothing but songs that just the catchy-yet-shallow songs that the radio/MTV happened to be blurting out for the decade or two that they spent growing up.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It really depends on the artist and style of music.
With some artists, like the Beatles for instance, I like their singles. Their good stuff was really good, but their bad stuff was, well, crap.
However, some artists are much more conducive to an album-type experience. I always kind of hate hearing a Pink Floyd song on the radio. Not that I hate Pink Floyd, they're one of my all-time favorite bands. But pulling a song like Comfortably Numb out of the context of The Wall, Brain Damage out of the context of Dark Side of the Moon, and so on, well, it just doesn't do it justice.
It doesn't just have to be concept albums this applies to. A lot of albums have themes that run through them, even though each song stands pretty well on its own. Fleetwood Mac's Rumors is like that. Sure, each song is great, but all of them together are greater than the sum of their parts.
I think that a HUGE problem (in capital letters!) with the music industry today, aside from treating its customers as extortion victims, is that they don't want to aim for specialized tastes any more. They want everyone just to listen to the same pop crap they forcefeed us all, and if you don't like it, well, don't listen to anything at all. There is no room in their business model for people who like x type of music and other people who like y.
Good music defines music industry success.
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An album is a work of art as a whole, a sort of a modern symphony with multiple parts. Really, if the industry wants to save the album, it needs to let the artists be artists.
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Can you show me the Billboard Top 10 for any month in history that is just chock-full of talent, as opposed to being filled with well-marketed acts which happened to catch a passing fancy of the public?
although not really my taste, Dec. 20, 1969 might do:
No. 1, "Abbey Road," the Beatles
No. 2, "Led Zeppelin II," Led Zeppelin
No. 3, "Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas," Tom Jones
No. 4, "Green River," Creedence Clearwater Revival
No. 5, "Let It Bleed," the Rolling Stones
No. 6, "Santana," Santana
No. 7, "Puzzle People," the Temptations
No. 8, "Blood Sweat & Tears," Blood Sweat & Tears
No. 9, "Crosby, Stills & Nash," Crosby, Stills & Nash
No. 10, "Easy Rider" soundtrack (featuring the Byrds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf)