The Americana and roots music authority

Do albums matter anymore?

The first album I had that was all mine, that I didn't have to share with my sisters, was Madonna's Like a Virgin on vinyl. It was a gift for my fifth birthday, and I remember countless days lying on my bed, staring at the big cardboard cover, listening to the album. I'd only be able to do that for a half-hour or so at a time before I had to get up and walk across the room to turn the record over. I miss that whole experience. Waiting for the release date, ripping off the plastic wrap...when CDs became the norm, there was that big awkward box they came in. It was hard to contain the anticipation as you ripped away the packaging and put the album/cassette/CD into its player, following along with the long accordion-folded book-o-lyrics.

(I, of course, loved to read the acknowledgments, imagining the ways in which all these people came together to make an album possible.)

But, as we have well established, things are different now. I can purchase one song at a time from a digital store without even knowing what the artist looks like. It allows artists some modicum of anonymity (I wouldn't recognize Coldplay on the street, forget that they're the most popular band in the world), which probably helps with the whole creative process, ensuring sanity is held onto a little longer and ideas get the opportunity to free-flow. (Maybe?)

I've had this conversation a lot lately, though. Why are people still making albums? I reckon a lot of it is some leftover idea that this is how the recording industry works. With the industry going kaput, though, do we really need to keep making albums? I agree that, for the sake of marketing a product, it's good to set a date, make the fans look forward to something, build some buzz. But then what about dropping four extraordinary songs on your website on that date? What about building into that date a special on-your-site-only video performance? A special track of outtakes for people who show up that date only to download the new music?

There are so many other ways to do things than to continue the whole album thing. Especially when so many of the albums released these days are not cohesive units of artistry. They're just collections of random songs, tossed in a bucket and handed to the world. There's a sense that 12 songs make a record, regardless of how much sense they make in one place at one time, or even if they're all good. As a result, I wind up feeling bad when I go to a show and don't buy an album from a band, when I forego my local record store to download the three songs from the disc that I love, ignoring those other misses that served a time and purpose but didn't translate well to tape.

On the flipside of that, I wonder about the desire to only listen to great music. Without those throw-away songs that drag an album down, how can we conscientiously appreciate the really good ones? Is suffering through the bad songs on an album in order to get to the good ones something we need to do in order to really appreciate the career arc of an artist who works their way, album after album, toward The Great Work? Don't we need the throw-away tracks in order to remember the whole humanity of it all?

I don't have any conclusion here; just bringing another recurring conversation online. There will always be those who embrace the multi-media artistic expression that comes from making an album - the cover art, the liner notes, the songs, the umbrella meaning of 12 songs that come together under one title, etc. But there will also continue to be artists who make records for no reason other than to keep a record of the songs they write - for better or worse. I wonder if, for those folks - the great majority of artists who continue to feel like making an album is something artists are obligated to do - the album is even necessary anymore.

Tags: a, albums, cassettes, cds, coldplay, industry, like, madonna, media, music, More…new, vinyl, virgin

Comment by Gar on March 4, 2009 at 9:16pm: They do matter to me. I just don't like the download route. I feel you are getting an inferior product. A 256 kbit sounds even worse than a cd, which is even worse than the old analog vinyl. I still enjoy walking into the local record store and going through the wall of discs and finding something new. Maybe I am a dinosuar in the world of music but that's just my take. Keep the albums coming, there are still dreamers who like to pop the cellophane off and read the lyrics, credits, etc while listening to some new music.

Comment by RP N10 on March 4, 2009 at 10:50pm: They matter but not to the exclusion of everything else. The move from vinyl to CD changed the way I listened to music as well as the way artists made records. My experience was that 17-20 minutes was around the length of an LP side. And the artist knew this when they made the record. A lot of the time I listened to 1 side of 1 record then a side of a different album. So the dynamics of the running order reflected that and there would be two balaced sides.

With the CD the "listening unit" upped from 20 mins to often > 60. Not many artists can keep my attention for that length of time; and quite often I don't have time to listen to a CD all the way through uninterrupted.

Downloading (audio quality aside) has moved the unit back to the song which it was when the 78rpm record was the norm. Except that it's a unit which is listener defined. Rather than producer (artist/record company) defined. Which is liberating and is one of the reasons CD prices have fallen.

That said, I prefer to hear the music in the presentation intended by the artist if that group of songs is what they choose to present to me. In the same vein when I go to a show, I prefer to hear what the performer feels like playing and hold back any expectations.

So yeah, albums matter but they matter only as a group of songs the artist wants to present as a whole but size really doesn't matter at all.

Comment by Dangerbird on March 5, 2009 at 12:48am: Hah! One of my first albums was also Like A Virgin, as well as Culture Club's Waking up with the House on Fire, though both were on cassette.

The argument that downloads have caused the death knell for albums is one borne from a short memory. As RPN10 rightfully points out, the 12-inch album was only the key marketing strategy of the industry for a relatively short period. Arguably it became a PR's focal point in the early 60's with The Beatles, and The Stones, etc... but really only lasted until the early-eighties when MTV saw a return to the 'single' as the marketing priority.

Before the LP, the usual format was the 10-inch (or multiple 10-inch's), and before that it was the 78rpm. However, even during the LP's heyday, the 7-inch reigned supreme as far as sales went.

So the increase of single-track downloads is really just replacing the cds, which essentially replaced the 7", which really just replaced the 78rpm.

It may be true that the 'album' as a concept is under threat, but arguably it's little more than a return to the roots of the industry. This may upset all those proggers who love nothing more than an 18-minute keyboard solo, but to those who prefer the three-minute, three-chord and the truth format, it shouldn't be feared.

Indeed, some of my favourite albums of late have come in around the 30-minute mark (Todd Snider, JTE, spring to mind) whereas the longer albums have disappointed (the latest DBT's for example). Maybe my attention span is decreasing with age.

All that being said, I have yet to embrace the download as a legitimate format. I generally won;t pay for a download (I've done it once and felt cheated), and I generally won't download individual tracks. My HDD is littered with random tracks and the completist in me finds that all too annoying.

Comment by David Haskin on March 5, 2009 at 6:18am: You guys are making me feel old. I remember buying my first album like it was yesterday. But it was, in fact, 1965: Out of Our Heads by the Rolling Stones. I played that thing until it was no longer listenable, then bought another copy, feeling smugly superior to the legions of Beatles fans.

When an artist releases a cohesive album, it is a thing of beauty, a statement that is far more powerful than an album of thrown-together songs. True, the current method of online distribution encourages single-track marketing and discourages albums, but that's only the start of the issue. The upside of the new order in the recording industry is that it makes it easier for new, independent artists to record and develop a following. But the downside is that creating a cohesive album requires more repertoire than many new, independent artists have. And it also requires much more artistry.

On the whole, I'm glad there are more artists who have easier access to listeners. I find joy in spotting new artists and watching their artistry bloom over time. But the downside is, I believe, that there are a lot of artists out there who show a lot of promise but just don't have the artistic weight, for now, to put together a cohesive album.

Comment by Shaun Harvey on March 5, 2009 at 7:33am: I recently posed a similar question on my own blog. Of course this was after compiling my list of 100 Albums...not the 100 Greatest Albums of All-Time mind you, just 100 Albums that I've enjoyed listening to cover to cover or that were touchstones of sorts...I think that they way we purchase albums and the manner in which they are delivered to listeners is in doubt...the CD will hang on for a few more years I'm guessing and I think the idea of packaging music in LP form and including a digital download card is a smart thing...you get the full rich sound of vinyl and the portability of the download. Sure vinyl is never going to return the prevalence of its glory days, but do a google search for "the return of vinyl" and you'll find plenty of recent articles touting a comeback. And from my own personal experiences working in a record store and writing about music, it's young folks who are buying vinyl in increasing numbers. Every album that I've purchased in the last three months has been on vinyl truth be told.

I think the album will live on as long as there's good music to be heard, liner notes to be read, and we desire some tangible representation of art that we can hold and experience away from the glowing of our computer screens and that fills the room with sound which is something the ear buds of an iPod cannot do.

And in case you're curious you can find the fourth installment of my 100 albums here (which includes links to parts 1-3)

Comment by Kim Ruehl on March 5, 2009 at 8:31am: Yeah, the whole "return" of vinyl thing is really interesting. There are some labels that are only releasing vinyl, which I think is great. I think it goes along with the trend of people bucking protools and recording live to tape. With the industry going kaput and the value of the album declining, I love seeing artists just saying "You know what, if I'm going to make a record, I'm going to do it right - record to tape and release it on vinyl." Of course, I don't own a turntable (yet...for shame!) but I love the idea of a download card in a vinyl record. There has to be some way to make it portable, too.

To Dave's point that newer independent artists may not have enough of a body of work to make a cohesive artistic statement on an album...I think that's a good point. Because anyone can record, people don't have to wait until the album their recording is anything more than just a bunch of songs. The best indie albums do tend to come from artists who have been at it long enough to compile a good, strong body of work. Maybe it's not about killing the album format, but just exercising some restraint until there's an album-worth of things to say.

Comment by Grant Alden on March 5, 2009 at 12:31pm: Well, as the resident curmudgeon...of course I'm an album guy, even though I have something like 5,000 singles in the back room. (If only I could afford a jukebox. Or had room for one. Or felt like anybody in my family wanted to listen to any of that stuff!)

I'm not sure this is an either/or proposition.

For most of recording history, music has been written to fit fixed media formats. The three-minute pop song is, after all, a reflection of the strengths and limitations of the 45. And, really, it was a two-minute pop song (maybe something to do with the preferred length of a 78?), which made radio even happier. And left more room each hour for other songs.

We now have, in theory, an opportunity to ingest music of any length.

I've no objection to artists releasing singles, particularly young artists finding their voices. That is, after all, how we found Whiskeytown. But singles are to albums as short stories are to novels. I like both; some writers cannot master both formats, some writers have only the one story (or song) in them.

But without the long-form to work with and aspire to, we seem to my cranky ears to be heading more and more toward increasingly disposable and forgettable music.

And if it's only downloadable, I'm not interested. If it's not a physical product, I don't want it. I want original art on my walls, too. I'm funny like that. (Well, I'm funny in a lot of ways. Or not funny at all. But I'll stop now, regardless.)

Comment by Easy Ed on March 5, 2009 at 4:24pm: Just a few years ago I would have replied similar to what Grant has written. Ownership and physical product was essential...and as it was also my business, it was pretty much how I made a living. Being part of an industry that killed off the single, we all pretty much said to the consumer that the long form was the only form.

Fast forward to when I purchased my first iPod, and I uploaded my CD's and would always listen to them from start to finish. One day I'm sitting on a plane next to a guy I knew from the business and we start comparing what we're listening to. He says to me, "Oh...I just hit shuffle." That shocked me. I had seen the shuffle setting in the menu and never thought to even try it out, or understand why someone would use it.

So like a kid sneaking his first smoke, I tried shuffle and it changed my life. The iPod as "jukebox" rocks my world. I've got about 10,000 tracks on it and am never disappointed at what comes up. It allowed me to rediscover old albums I never would have played again, and new artists that I surely wouldn't have made time for. I take it with me everywhere and have listened to more music in the past few years than I have in the last twenty.

For me it's now all about the songs and rarely about the long form. In fact, there are many a time when I'll download or upload a CD and then delete all but one or two of the tracks. Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine looked at every guy as being either "sponge-worthy" or not? That's what I do with every song now....the first criteria is if it's " iPod worthy" and then it gets put in the deck and will pop up sometime, someplace when I least expect it. Every song, both new and old, becomes a hidden treasure waiting it's turn in the queue.

Look...as technology has evolved, the way we experience our music is really now in control of the artist and the end user and not the business. If Steve Earle writes a new song this afternoon, records it tonight on his MacPro, and wants to throw it up on his MySpace page, I think that's a good thing. Why have to wait until he has ten more tracks and then stand in line for a release date ten months away?

If that's his choice...so be it. But now the listener can choose the way he or she digests it. If you ever looked at monthly download recaps from Apple, you'd see that the downloads of songs versus downloads of complete albums is off the chart. All of this, in my opinion, is a huge plus for new musicians in particular and the artists [we on this site] love the most who can't sustain recording careers in the world of major distribution.

The digital file of a single song levels the playing field. The book's still being written on what the new business model will look like, but my guess is that it won't necessarily look anything like it used to look.

Comment by Kim Ruehl on March 5, 2009 at 4:33pm: Yeah, and who's to say, once you've posted ten songs, one at a time, over the course of a year or however long it takes to your website/myspace/ND community page (ahem) that you can't then go and posthumously gather them all onto a vinyl LP to sell to folks who prefer that method? I think the possibilities are endless.

Comment by Dangerbird on March 6, 2009 at 4:13am: a further development...

the local 'youth culture' radio station appears to be playing more tracks from mash-up artists, suggesting that the young people of the day can't even focus their attention on the one song for more than 30 seconds!

if that's the case, what hope does the LP have?

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