A Prediction for 2008

"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...