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."

Comments

I was worried about this

[prockcore]

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.

Re:I was worried about this

[dolphinling]

I definitely agree. The vast majority of the music I own is from independent labels, and most of it I often listen to an album at a time. I understand that certain formats (where you don't have the listener's attention for long) work better for singles, but music that's meant to be good, and meant to be really listened to, still can and does work better as an album.

Re:I was worried about this

[WilliamSChips]

And that's why Radiohead is failing.

Re:I was worried about this

[BoberFett]

I like albums too. At the same time I realize that most popular "musicians" don't have the ability to create them. There are some excellent musicians who can create a dozen tracks covering 45 or more minutes which form a cohesive message or story. That's a small minority though. Most of the pop bands of today release a CD with a handful singles that are no way relevant to one another, and only two of which are good enough to bother listening to.

High quality artists can continue to create albums. One hit wonders should know their place in the world:

1. Accept the fact that most of their music isn't that good
2. Learn to be grateful that they had one hit song
3. Invest some of the income from their hit single instead of blowing the whole thing on drugs and hookers

Re:I was worried about this

[christurkel]

The gist is, albums will always have a role to play in music, digital age or not, it's just singles will become the dominant form. Think of it this way: AC/DC, Bob Seger, etc, will always put albums worth buying but now you'll be saved from whole albums of Britney Spears and Ashlee Simpson.

Re:I was worried about this

[notamisfit]

Singles have always been the dominant form; it's just that the record industry hasn't found a way to cater to that market since the 45 RPM record bit the dust.

Re:I was worried about this

[SimonInOz]

>> There are some excellent musicians who can create a dozen tracks covering 45 or more minutes which form a cohesive message or story.

Hm, let me think. Pink Floyd. The Moody Blues. Alan Parsons Project. Emerson Lake and Palmer.
Ok, so I'm showing my age.

But BoberFett has a point.

Mind you,

>> Invest some of the income from their hit single instead of blowing the whole thing on drugs and hookers

is a bit rich. Most bands seem to actually lose money from making albums after the music companies have their claws into them.
It puzzles me, I admit, why start-up bands - the pub circuit - don't simply publish their songs online as MP3s and let their fans do the markets. If they become success, they could either start charging for concerts (and offer MP3s of those to concert attendees). And never get nailed by the music companies. (Damn, they must have a good line of chat. "Hey, sign here. We will take possession of everything you ever create, we will sell it, make a fortune and charge you for the privilege. If you become a top 10 band you might start to make some money in about 3-4 years if you nearly kill yourselves and get very very lucky. Otherwise we will drive you broke" - "Sure, where do I sign?").

Re:I was worried about this

[PopeRatzo]

I had always been an album guy. Growing up with the great works of rock, which were all presented as albums, made me especially appreciative of the album form.

But since my most regular periods of music listening are my 1 hour bicycle trips to and from my office every day, and I listen to music on portable mp3 players, I'd come to like the "shuffle" format for the uncertainty and surprise it brought to my listening.

However, in the past several weeks, I've taken my player off of "shuffle" and have been listening to albums all the way through. It started when someone gave me a few albums that I've really come to enjoy (Apples in Stereo, in case you're interested, and others). So for nearly a month now, all I do is listen to albums all the way through on my way to the office and back home. The Man Who Sold the World, Icky Thump, Coltrane's Ballads, even The Stooges. I'd forgotten just how good great albums can be.

I'm betting the popularity of albums will return as the corporate music industry dries up and blows away and musical artists make more direct contact with their fans through direct marketing of their music via the web.

Re:I was worried about this

[Stormx2]

A generalisation, good sir. I too have a general dislike of produced-for-tv singles, and most of my favourite albums follow themes / are concept albums. However, length != quality. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club falls under your 45 minute mark, and if you look at a lot of beatlesesque indie pop, some albums fall well under 30 minutes, but can be fantastic.

Still doesn't beat out tool, thought ;)

Re:I was worried about this

[coaxial]

I'm sorry, but the concept album was always horrible self-absorbed exercise from the 70s. Yes, they still exist, but they're rarely any good. The good concepts albums are simply nominal concept albums. If you bash your audience over the head, you suck as a writer. Albums are portfolios. They represent a body of work at a period of time. Even on the fabled concept album, there's rarely any more than three stand out songs.

Good writers make good songs. The idea that they should sit on them until they get 12 others that might kinda sort of have a almost convincing story connecting them is dumb.

The problem isn't that the albums aren't concept albums, it's that most writers can't write lyrics. There's a lot of bands that I like. I like the music. The songs are cool, but I found it often helps not to actively listen to the lyrics. There's almost always a bit sophmoric. In the worst case, the lyrics reek of "moving units in the 13-20 year old demographic."

Re:I was worried about this

[wall0159]

And the great thing about albums by AC/DC is that you only need to buy one! /ducks

Re:I was worried about this

[spoco2]

He wasn't talking about the 'concept' album, we're not talking a Sgt Peppers, or Dark Side of the Moon here (although we could be just as well)... what we're talking about is a collection of songs that you can listen to together, one after the other and they all 'fit' together.

They don't have to have a cohesive story, they don't have to 'be a part' of some larger vision, but they work when played together, and the listener is rewarded from listening to all the tracks on an album, not just the singles.

Really, some of my favourite tracks have never been released as singles, and I'd have never known about them if I didn't buy entire albums.

Re:I was worried about this

[glwtta]

Albums are portfolios. They represent a body of work at a period of time.

So, I don't think anyone was really talking about concept albums in particular (they are, after all, a tiny minority), but I think the point of an album is to be a little more cohesive than you describe. A good album does hang together pretty well, both musically and thematically, and has a sensible progression, even if there is no "story" behind it (doesn't have to be as structured as, let's say, "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven", but you also couldn't put "Ghost Reveries" on shuffle and get the same effect out of it). You can't just grab the last 12 songs you wrote, arrange them alphabetically, and call that an album.

Not that I don't enjoy actual concept albums ("Gothic Kabbalah" and "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" come to mind).

the lyrics reek of "moving units in the 13-20 year old demographic."

I was just thinking that Moving Units would be a great name for a band - turns out it already is.

Re:I was worried about this

[coredog64]

The problem isn't that the albums aren't concept albums, it's that most writers can't write lyrics. This isn't a problem for country musicians. George Strait, for example, writes very few of his own songs but still manages to make all the songs from disparate writers "his own".

Re:I was worried about this

[Nefarious Wheel]

Have a look at what Abba did with their fame and fortune -- they had a sensible investment plan, and ended up fabulously wealthy. Possibly the most successful (in terms of wealth generated) indie band ever (check it out -- they managed the whole publishing effort themselves, along sound business principles). They certainly didn't fit the wreck-the-hotel image, they just made good popular music that had broad appeal, and they were sensible about how they ran their business.

Re:I was worried about this

[MonoSynth]

indeed. I hate it when bands just have nine good new songs but cram six more fillers on the album to make it 45+ minutes instead of less than 30 minutes, just to make it look like a 'real' album instead of an EP.

Re:I was worried about this

[MonoSynth]

and then there's Sufjan Stevens who manages to release an album with 72 minutes of pure goodness and another album with 75 minutes of outtakes from the recording sessions, just as great as the original album.

But those are exceptions. Most record labels won't even allow their artists to release an album full of good tracks, because 12 good songs means 3 albums with 4 good songs and a load of crappy album-fillers.

Re:I was worried about this

[hey!]

One theory of mine is that there is a very long period pendulum swinging here.

In the Baroque period, aristocratic patrons paid composers to create a soundtrack to various ceremonies: entering a banquet to sit down, going to prayers, or privately performed ballets with the patron and his set as the dancers.

By the end of the 1800s, this had been replaced by a middle class phenomenon: the concert hall performance with paying patrons. Like many middle class practices, there was a hefty element of self-improvement involved. Concerts were both entertainment and education. Like a lecture, a concert demands sustained attention.

What is an album, but a recorded concert? What is an iPod stuffed full of singles, but a background soundtrack for the owner's life?

Now the problem with my pendulum theory is that this doesn't have to be an either/or. People could spend most of their waking lives with earbuds wedged in their ears, and still attend concerts, either in person or in the form of an album. You don't listen to an album the same way as to a playlist.

People don't really have an entertainment budget; they buy the entertainment that appeals to them. And for whatever reason, longer forms that require extended attention do not appeal to them as much as music that they don't really pay much attention to at all.

The relevant budget may involve time, not money.

It's simplistic to say people don't have any attention span left. It amazes me that they follow very long and complex television shows, particularly if there is an element of competition in them: e.g., Survivor or American Idol.

TV has sucked the vitality out of so much of the rest of culture, whether it is political discourse or long forms of popular music, because it has sucked the reservoir of available attention dry.

Its interesting

[JamesRose]

How people normally start legally downloading, then turn to illegal downloading when either they can't afford, don't want to afford, or can't find the music they like. Very rarely however, have I heard of a music downloader who has ceased any illegal activity and started paying for the music, it just doesn't seem to happen. Now given this piece of information, you would thnk that teh music industry would be keen to stop people from downloading illegally in the first place, but all they've done is get a bad reputation by sueing everything and anything that has been near a 1 or a 0.

Well let me tell you something

[Winckle]

On monday of this week, I bought two singles. On 7" Vinyl, they were bansd i wouldn't normally try, but since I dug out an old turntable, I don't mind paying the 99p for the cheap 7" singles. 2 songs at 50p each is terrific value, and you get cool artwork!

Now why don't they just charge 99p for the CD single? Surely they'd sell loads more!

Back to the Future

[McFortner]

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

Re:Back to the Future

[BryanL]

I somewhat agree with your first sentence, then are opinions diverge. Albums didn't promote the 33 1/3, it was the other way around. The LP allowed artists (or forced them) to come up with musical ideas that lasted longer then 3 minutes. The CD was the same way. And I don't think the album will die out, it will find a new equilibrium in the digital market. That point may be 50/50 or 20/80, I don't know.

But record labels can save the album with a few tweeks in the system, such as lowering the prices on CDs or releasing their strangle hold on radio and more importantly, internet radio.

Correct me if I'm wrong

[Richard McBeef]

But I think the music industry has known that for about 50 years.

Let me be the first to say..

[ynososiduts]

Duh? Why is this even news? Many music groups have one good song, and the rest of the album stinks. Most people that use the usual peer to peer networks download one song, and not entire albums. I perfer legal torrents because you get the album in just one convenient download. But I still perfer to buy my music in LP vinyl format.

I like albums

[Slashdot Junky]

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

Go figure

[SnoopJeDi]

Singles are what people listen to the most. Gee, the radio industry has only been onto this for....40 years? Personally, I find myself buying few albums, lots of songs. Only if it's an artist I REALLY enjoy do I buy albums (this is all online, that is)

Custom Albums

[resistant]

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.

Re:Custom Albums

[shark72]

"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."

Not sure if you were being ironic, but that's been tried several times; there were cassette-based kiosks in the 80s and CD-based kiosks in the 90s. They were located in record stores.

Not to say that there's no room for another chance to succeed, but given the highly speculative nature of the record industry and the fact that every attempt so far has failed, I wouldn't expect to see sometbody trying it again soon.

Albums are great

[I'm Don Giovanni]

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.

Re:Albums are great

[Neil Blender]

To quote Homer Simpson: "Everyone knows Rock attained perfection in 1974."

Re:Albums are great

[McFortner]

Albums are like a complete work, singles are merely chapters

• Most

albums are just a single or two with whatever drek they can afford to buy for them to record. The few albums that are "complete works" tend to do very poorly. Most people want a the few songs from the artists they like. That is why mix tapes and cds are so popular, no junk.
One of the only labels that got that was K-Tel. They gave the public what they wanted (usually) and none of the junk. And where are they now? Gone. Face it, RIAA, albums just don't sell.
Michael

Re:Albums are great

[Phanatic1a]

Albums are like a complete work

The RIAA has been pushing that line ever since Sgt. Pepper, because that lets them package music in a way that's more convenient to them. All they need to do is find a hit single, wrap it in an album's worth of crap, and sell it for $18. Here's a great article on the conflict between selling the single and selling the album. You speak of Sgt. Pepper? Fine. But you ignore the marginalization of whole genres of music as the push for the concept album came to dominate the industry:

It's laughable to even consider this now, but in 1966, while the Beatles were working on what became Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, EMI stole two of the catchiest songs from the sessions ("Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever") and issued them as a chart-topping "double-A-side" single; the Beatles left the songs off the album, released months later. Nowadays, that would be unthinkable. The label would release "Penny Lane" to deejays, "work it" to radio for six months or so and then, with carefully planned synergy, release an album with the built-in hit while working a second single. Rather than being the singles-free "concept" album we know, Sgt. Pepper would have been strip-mined for hit after hit.

And would that have been so bad? For one thing, the idea of the single-free, artistically "pure" album has proved to be (mostly) a crock, the occasional Led Zeppelin or Radiohead album notwithstanding. But there was a bigger problem with Sgt. Pepper, which officially kicked off the "album era" (even though it followed Pet Sounds by months and several Frank Sinatra concept albums by a decade, but never mind): it gave the music industry a new business model - one to which it still mindlessly clings, 40 years later.

Once labels saw that long-playing albums could sell as well as or better than 45-RPM singles, the whole emphasis changed. Music was meant to be heard, enjoyed, judged and, most important, purchased at length. The standard unit of measure for music became not the song, but the bundle of songs. Labels built their economic foundation around people's willingness to buy more than one song by an artist at a time.

So began three decades of artistic evolution - the best artists created brilliant, ageless album-length statements - and commercial devolution. In the '70s, labels treated rock acts as "album acts" and pop and R&B acts as "singles acts," prioritizing the former and ghettoizing the latter. In the '80s, labels emphasized albums that could be milked dry for hits: Thriller, Purple Rain, Born in the U.S.A., True Blue, Control, Hysteria, Faith - each spinning off five, six, even seven hits until radio listeners succumbed and bought the damned thing already. At least then, they let you buy the singles, too. By the '90s, overcome by greed, the labels decided to eliminate singles altogether, withholding radio smashes from the under-$5 market. You like that Fugees song we've spread across R&B, rock, top 40 and adult-contemporary radio over the past year? Come and get the full CD, it's on sale for 16 bucks. Pop lovers got whiplash, as they went from the '80s mode of hearing hit acts saturate radio with a string of singles to the '90s model - hearing one hit burned out for the better part of a year. One admiring Billboard article I read in the mid-'90s actually marveled at A&M Records' ability to promote the Gin Blossoms song "Hey Jealousy" for about 15 months.

When you look at pop-music history this way, the Napster movement at the end of the century can be read as a true, epoch-ending rebellion - not just to the mediocre quality and high prices of CDs in the '90s, but to an industry that misread human nature back in the '60s and can't admit it made a mistake. It's the songs, stupid! The public has tried to deliver this message to musicians and the industry over and over: let us buy the songs, and we might buy the album too; we learn to love an act one song at a time, n

Album = 2 singles + padding. Where's the value?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Most people buying albums only really buy it for a few songs, with most of the rest being padding so that "you get your money's worth".

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.

Re:Album = 2 singles + padding. Where's the value?

[prockcore]

The people who lose are the labels and record stores since they find it hard to add value any more.

And the artists. We're heading toward a future where people will have an ipod full of 1000 different artists, one song each. They won't know the name of the artist.. they certainly won't be watching to see what that artist does next.

The rise of albums can be linked

[noewun]

To the rise of FM radio in the mid to late 60s and 70s. FM was "free form" back then, which gave local DJs the ability to program a more varied and deeper set of songs, rather than the same 40 or 50 "hits" mandated by Clear Channel. Even in my early teens years (the 1980s) you could still find local radio stations which played entire albums, usually on a Friday or Saturday night. Now, of course, this is not the case. Listen to a Clear Channel-owned radio station in Minneapolis and one in Atlanta and the only difference will be the ads. No cuts from deeper on a disc, nothing weird or unusual, just the same 40 or 50 songs played over and over.

Obviously There are other factors which influence this. Musical tastes and styles change, as in the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s, the 45 rpm single was king. But I still believe that the conglomeration and corporatization of FM radio has done enormous harm to music. And it's the main reason I haven't listened to terrestrial radio in more than a few brief snatches in several years, as whenever I give it a try I hear the same repetitive song lists over and over. I give my listening time and money to internet radio.

A Number Of Reasons

[BryanL]

1. The cost of an album is not in line with the the cost of the single. Singles on an album are songs with the greatest value in terms of demand. Labels can charge a buck because people will pay it. People will not pay a buck a piece for the filler songs.

2. Maybe singles are selling because labels are focusing on making good singles (though that is debatable). At the least they are working harder to market them.

3. Singles sell because radio plays the single and nothing else on the album. Radio exposure = sales.

4. CD is the medium of albums and downloaded files are the medium of the single. As music downloads go up, so does the sales of singles.

5. As a correlary, as oulets for CDs sales dry-up, so do sales of CDs (I.E. B&M stores).

Why harder for artists?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Why should it be harder for artists?

Many artists only produce a few great songs, but they need to generate a whole CD full of crap to record an albumn... that nobody wants. This cycle is driven by the labels.

What is much better for the artists is to generate the good songs that they can, on a budget they can afford. This makes it far easier for them to get published and make some money. It reduces the barrier of entry.

If anything a singles-based industry makes it far easier for more artists to participate and make money.

A simple analogy...

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

I'm not worried about this.

[Hott of the World]

I don't like albums. I don't like artists. I like music. Particularly, I like catchy singles. The only reason I don't just listen to the radio for my fix is that I enjoy my music on my terms.

I used to by Albums for the Songs. Unfortunately not every song is good. Not every song captures the mood as well as the best one, nor do they capture the same mood. Why am I buying these again?

Some people enjoy the album experience as it is now. Artists, more-so, since most albums aren't done in a single night, nor in the same state of mind. It really lets you explore the different atmospheres that the group goes through when making an album, at least if you don't have it completely remixed and reorganized by some music industry wiz.

Re:I'm not worried about this.

[scotch]

I don't like albums. I don't like artists. I don't like music. Particularly, I like catchy singles.

There, I fixed that for you.

Re:I'm not worried about this.

[AndersOSU]

There was a cover story in USAToday about this about a month ago (hey, I was in a hotel room, stop judging me.) The main focus was the massive slide that rap has undergone in the last three years. I particularly liked the comparison that in 2003 the best selling album was The Eminem Show, and in 2006 it was The High School Musical soundtrack.

Their analysis was that one of several problems that loomed large was that rap is a very single driven genre, and people simply don't have to buy albums anymore. (The other major problem was that rap had lost all credibility with pretty much everybody.)

It depends

[KingSkippus]

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.

Re:It depends

[Kopiok]

The beauty of online music is that you are better able to find those specialized tastes. Even among legal services. It presents alternatives to the manufactured label crap, and I think that's why they're so scared. They fear the independent labels, which are exploding on the web, will steal their business.

Re:It depends

[Admiral Ag]

That's somewhat true, but I wouldn't change the way iTunes distributes music.

Like you, I prefer albums (and from the look of your post, the same ones you do), but there are a lot of groups that only ever did one or two decent things (like CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love"), and I only want that particular track.

However, I think that iTunes is much more conducive to album sales than people think, especially for new stuff. I've lost count of the number of times I've only wanted 3 or 4 songs off an album and bought them. Then iTunes says that I can complete the album for four or five dollars and get another 7 or 8 tracks. I'm always falling for that. In the old days if I bought the singles, I would have to pay full price for the album and that would discourage me from buying it. With iTunes plus buying an album is even better value, since the single tracks are more expensive and the albums are still the same price.

At least now we have a few months to decide whether we really want the whole thing.

I don't agree about the specialized tastes thing. It seems to me that music is more fragmented than ever. When I was a teenager people either listened to "rock" music, "pop" music, or "punk" music. Now there are all sorts of genres and subgenres and the record charts don't really have the same meaning that they once had. There probably will never be another phenomenon like the Beatles, where virtually every kid bought the record.

The record companies have also been pretty good at putting out a lot of old stuff with added value. I bought the Deluxe edition of "DIsraeli Gears" the other day, and it is superb value (a ton of extra tracks, radio performances, alternate versions, etc.). God knows how many copies that old record will sell. Not many I suspect, but whoever was responsible for putting that package together did an excellent job. Another good example is the box set of Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin. I didn't pay much for that, but you get the whole show, a book and a DVD of the film they made about it.

So, while not wanting to sound like a shill for the record companies, and acknowledging that they do put out quite a lot of crap and that some new stuff is clearly a ripoff, there is a lot of stuff that they take an extreme amount of care over, which probably doesn't make them much cash, and which is a real bargain for anyone who really likes music.

Re:It depends

[wasted]

...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...

Change a few words, and it applies to the automobile industry as well, and probably a lot of others. Too many industries have decided that marketing means making the people want what we want to sell, instead of selling what the people want.

Re:It depends

[drcagn]

Listen to Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, or Abbey Road completely through--masterpieces of the album art form. The Beatles were pioneers of making the album a respectable medium; before them most bands were extremely singles-heavy. Stuff like the White Album, not so much, even though there are great songs on it. Other than that, I agree with your post. A good album is an entire book, full of ups and downs and different emotions and feelings. A single is like taking the climax from a book and reading it on its own. Yeah, it's good, but it has no meaning or significance by itself.

Re:It depends

[ChrisA90278]

"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."

Odd that you should pick the Beatles as an example. Beatles are usually sighted as THE example of how albums can be more then just a collection of unrelated tunes. The albums that you listed "Dark Side of the Moon".. came later after the beatles had broken the ground and shown what could be done.

The other thing about the Beatles was that they were popular enough that they could experiment and include a huge range of music styles. You say "some of it is crap". What it means is that their range of styles was wider then your range of taste.

I'd settle for either...

[rubberglove]

...if I could only find what I'm looking for.

The vast majority of the time, when there is a specific album I want to buy I have to hunt around and around for it.

This happens for the more obscure stuff, but also for some of the more popular artists. Last week I spent WAY too much time looking for the new Björk album.

It reminds me a bit of when I first started using bittorrent. There were no meta-meta torrent search engines, and no massive trackers. You had to look around at a lot of small (and sometimes unreliable) sites to try to get what you wanted.

Why so difficult? Because I'm not interested in buying any DRM infected music. It's not just an 'ethical' decision - it's a practical one. I've come to be in possession of 3 mp3 players: an iRiver h100, an iPod video and an new iPod nano. Two of those run rockbox, and the nano will the second it is supported. Having to run some software (i.e. iTunes or even the iPod-capable linux apps) to access my music just bugs me.

So, while I would gladly pay for convenience, very few sites want to offer it to me. Honestly, I'd even run iTunes in VMWare and use the iTunes store if I could get the music I want in an uncrippled format. I'd love to support their new DRM-free offerings, but I've never seen a single one! So what am I going to do, burn CDs?

I'm happy to spend money on music, but damn, it's not easy. Most of the time I just give up in the end and just get it from P2P. Does anyone have some good recommendations for non-DRM online music stores?

Note: I'm not going to bother with sketchy Russian sites that are technically legal, but pay no royalties to artists. I'd rather just get it for free in that case.

the real reason for the Music Industry's slump?

[night_flyer]

here's billboard's Top 10

1) Rihanna "Umbrella"
2) Shop Boyz "Party Like A Rock Star"
3) Fergie "Big Girls Don't Cry"
4) Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah"
5) T-Pain "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')"
6) Maroon 5 "Makes Me Wonder"
7) Avril Lavigne "Girlfriend"
8) Justin Timberlake "Summer Love"
9) Amy Winehouse "Rehab"
10) Fabolous "Make Me Better"

DJs

[Tweekster]

The only people i know that buy (and they download too, but they buy a hell of a lot) singles are DJs that spin them at clubs etc.

I cant believe success is judged by singles.
Albums are what they measure platinum records in

In reality..

[okinawa_hdr]

Good music defines music industry success.

I agree

[tjstork]

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.

Popular culture panders, film at eleven

[patio11]

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? (Nothing categorically wrong with passing fancies, incidentally. I actually *like* Avril Lavigne in moderation. Not everything needs to be fine art, and fine art doesn't need to sell 10 million copies to be validated.)

Re:Popular culture panders, film at eleven

[slashdot.org]

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)