"According to holiday numbers released by Neilsen Soundscan, physical album sales were down 21.4 percent from last year. The drop is the latest indication of the spectacular decline of the music industry’s ability to move albums.
Many in the industry will shake angry fists of blame at Online piracy, but, as Ars points out, the fact that Josh Groban’s “Noel” was the highest selling album of the year speaks volumes. In summary: the music industry needs to focus more on making better music and work on becoming more progressive so that it can better fulfill consumers’ tastes."
This appeared in a newsletter I subscribe to today and leads the way to one of my predictions for 2008 - less shit music.
It can't be long before the nails start getting hammered into the album format. A number of bands - Ash for one - have stopped releasing albums, and moved to a progressive single-by-single pattern for releasing their music. This does what the public have been screaming out for decades - it removes the necessity to pay for what is essentially 'filler'.
There are very few albums that you can genuinely say have a full line-up of top quality tracks - 'Nevermind' might be one you point to. BUt there have been far too many that have had the higher numbers on the track listing stuffed with mediocre rubbish in order to fill-up a CD.
Now its time for the consumer to fight/bite back....and hopefully this sort of movement will take with it the dire rubbish that is churned out by the Pop Idol franchises of this world...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Singles have always been the hook for an album, they are catchy, instantly easy to digest and frequently use un-complex chord progressions, which have been used hundreds of times before.
The great thing about albums is that they force you to listen to the back catalog. Songs which are a little more ground breaking, complex and edgy. I can think of a dozen examples where I have grown to love the other songs on an album more than the original hook single. It has expanded my music taste and makes my music collection much more interesting.
True if people like an artist they will usually dig up their other stuff, but especially with a pay per song model we are limiting our cultural output nearly exclusively to songs which sound good on the first play.
The other problem with getting rid of albums is something which can occur in itunes even if you have a whole album. Order is important. A lot of time is spent by a band determining the order of songs on an album. This process is less influenced by commercial considerations and is more about their own personal tastes. There is something soothing and personal about listening to tracks in the order a band intended.
I agree that albums are overpriced and many bands fill albums with formulaic crap because they don't make money on singles, but I hope that in the new system of digital distribution there is room for b-sides.
JK
I don't disagree with you and I agree that many classic albums have songs that need more than one listen to...
But there are way too many non-classic albums that deserve to never see the light of day. My hope is that the new way of releasing music will still see albums come out by established bands, or good new bands - but that bands filling up 75% of the album with crap won't sell, and will be reduced to just singles...
Quality almost always finds its way to the top...
Post a Comment