The Death of the AlbumWith all the recent hoo-ha and excitement about the growth of online digital music sales, there's an increasing number of commentators who are postulating that the album format is just about past its use by date. With consumers able to buy the specific tracks (ie. the singles) that they want from an album, they can avoid forking out extra cash (and, admit it, even with recent price-cutting, CD albums still are pretty expensive) for what is essentially a jewel case, a couple more listenable tracks, and a whole lot of filler.

A lot of this is due, no doubt, to the fact that the big record companies have, for the best part of a couple of decades now, been churning out albums (and recording artists) that are, by most anyone's standards, total crap. The current formula seems to be: two or three hit singles, get a top-name producer (or producer team) in to record enough tracks to fill up and album, throw a shit-load of marketing and promotion the public's way to get them to hand over the cash for the three songs they want (and the artwork), and voila: a modern, disposable pop album (and, theoretically, fantastic profit-margins for the majors).

However, with the advent of p2p and online music stores, this business model is obviously failing the majors pretty quickly, to the point that sales figures are substantially down (a 15% decline in album shipments over the last three years), and online sales are expected to grow to the point where they make up 33% of US music retail figures by 2008.

What to do? What to do?

Make some decent albums, for a start. There is talk of the labels backing off from their current money-making schemes that revolve around one-hit wonders and short-term stars, and investing in acts for the long-term. Bands like Radiohead and Blur (Metallica and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are also thrown up as examples in this CSM article) have shown that it is possible to still release 'proper' albums - that is, albums that have a sense of start, middle and finish (or even just a sense of being a 'whole'), as opposed to a collection of disjointed tracks (or, in the case of so many hip-hop releases, held together by an interminable procession of 'interludes'. End. It. Now. Please. Outkast are excepted from this rule. Missy Elliot is not).

And the CD doesn't have to be an album. It's always amazed me that you can buy a CD single for a few bucks, but a new release CD album from a major label will set you back NZ$35 or so. I mean, what's the difference in the manufacturing process? Is there really $25-$30 dollars more manufacturing cost involved for the 6 or 7 extra (filler) tracks that have to be burned onto the album? Why not just release the good stuff, however many tracks that may be, and price it accordingly?

So yes, the 'Death of the Album' may just mean the death of the hastily constructed pop padder. 'Real' albums will live on, no doubt, and I suspect that shorter-formats (4-8 song EPs) will increase in popularity as well, as consumers become more wary of forking out extra cash for those not-so-good tracks.
# |

blog main page