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Death of the Album? 154

Posted by Cliff from the if-it-can-survive-tapes-dats-and-cds-it-can-survive-the-internet dept.
panth0r asks: "I know that a simple search for ' death of the album' will give you about 2000 finds of personal websites and their owner's opinions of what is to come of the music industry. Of course I can't resist the chance to ask Slashdot for their take on the issue, so here it is: Do you think the traditional music album is dying out because of advances in technology?"
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Death of the Album? More

Death of the Album?

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  • My answer (Score:2, Informative)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )
    Of course I can't resist the chance to ask Slashdot for their take on the issue, so here it is: Do you think the traditional music album is dying out because of advances in technology?

    No.

    • Long answer (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )
      Let my clarify the short answer from my first post [slashdot.org]. I think that thanks to technology, the album is better than ever. Today you can buy a cheap computer for professional music mastering [apple.com], and publish your album even if only three people in the world will buy it [cafepress.com] (or even publish hundreds of albums, with a new album every two days, or... you get the idea). Is the vinyl dead? Of course not. CD is not going anywhere either.

      (Sidenote: why on Earth has Slashcode started to change dashes to double hyphens?)

      • Yes and no (Score:2, Insightful)

        by SgtChaireBourne ( 457691 )
        It depends what you mean by album.

        In my rather outdated way of thinking, I consider CDs and downloadable songs to be different from albums. I consider a real album to be an LP or two or four with a cardboard jacket that may or may not fold out. Those were definitely works of art, especially those from the psychadelic era, and you could spend hours looking at them even sober.

        ... and for good or bad, those works of art are definitely gone. Look at the printing quality for graphics on the CD inserts, t

        • Pearl Jam [sonymusic.com] has been doing this since their second album, released way back in 1993. All of their albums since the third (Vitalogy) have come in funky cardboard cases, with booklets containing photos, partial lyrics and full credits. Check it out.

          Disclaimer: I'm a very-biased fan.

        • Album art and credits still exist. Although, generally, making an expansive piece-of-art album is quite costly (unless you hand make them and only do a few dozen).

          Larger record companies don't want to invest the funds and time. Smaller independant artists just don't have to money to do it if they want to make more than a handful of copies.

          That said, a week ago I finished my first 'album' (although was a release on tape... long painful hardware related story.. but it matches some of my heroes like Werewo

      • I could be wrong, but I got the impression that with everything being in MP3 format, this encourages a smorgasboard approach. Instead of buying an entire album, you just buy one or two of the best songs. Or at least the songs played on the radio. The problem with this is that, in my opinion, I own some albums where the songs played on the radio were mediocre, and the best songs never got any airtime.

        One side effect of this might be the eventual elimination of the album. A band could release a new song
        • Well, isn't this kind of getting back to where the music industry started? In the early days, the concept of an "Album" didn't really exist. Singles were released. I want to say it wasn't until the 60s that albums came out very much, and the "concept" album started around the time of Sgt. Pepper's.

          That said, there have been some really good albums that you can't really just pick and choose songs from. As mentioned elsewhere, Dark Side is one of them (but, I would argue every Floyd from there until Wa

    • Yes and No.

      Yes- for the bubble gum pop that bombards us every day from TW and the like. Who cares about that music? No one over the age of 14.

      No- for the true artist, where the whole album take the listener though a journey. Think Abby Road, Smile, etc.

  • conceptual structure (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jkakar ( 259880 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @05:39AM (#11627920)
    The idea of an album has become a conceptual structure. Each song tells part of a the story that an album represents. So no, I don't think the album is dead at all.
    • The idea of an album has become a conceptual structure. Each song tells part of a the story that an album represents.

      That's what we call a 'concept album'. They've been around since the sixties.

    • I see albums the same way, and this is the natural response to this "albums are doomed" sentiment.

      But...

      I think that the album might be dying anyway, but not because of technology. People's taste in music is simply different, and the music that sells does not come close to your description, where "Each song tells part of a the story that an album represents." Yes, we can all name exceptions, but how much of the market share do these exceptions have? Most of the music buyers these days don't care about al

      • Yes, we can all name exceptions, but how much of the market share do these exceptions have?

        I think it's sad, but understandable, that one has to bring up "market share" in a discussion ostensibly about art.
    • "The idea of an album has become a conceptual structure. Each song tells part of a the story that an album represents."

      Twelve songs on one disc do not an album make.

      Furthermore, it's up to the listener. I have never in my life listened to "Operation: Mindcrime", "The Wall", or "Tommy" straight through. Good songs on each, but that's it for me.

      Overall, most of the public does not care for "albums."* Most only care for "songs." I don't know anyone at all who's a real album-art-and-liner-notes kind of guy.
      • Summary: Fuck albums. There's too much pretension in the music biz anyway. Release what you want, call it what you want, but don't expect me to sit in a chair exactly between the speakers in a dark room and listen to the whole thing all the way through.

        See, that's where you and I differ. I'd say fuck singles. However, someone like yourself who has admitted to not even liking albums is hardly in a position to comment.
      • I don't know anyone at all who's a real album-art-and-liner-notes kind of guy.

        This reminds me of the story of the Manhattan Upper-East Side intellectual who is supposed to have said, "I just can't understand how Reagan got elected. I don't know anyone who voted for him!"
    • The vast majority of albums are merely collections of songs. Concept albums are few and far between.

  • It's dead, Jim (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 )
    Actually, since the death of the CD longbox, albums have generally become something relegated to the past. It's no longer something that you buy to add to your collection, rather it is something that you consume and toss out when the latest fad washes away the fading memories of it.

    The fact that most artists suck these days (Rush? Tool? These are good??) doesn't help the situation much, but it is more a symptom of the real problem which is that album covers and cases have become cheap plastic "jewel box

    • Actually, since the death of the CD longbox, albums have generally become something relegated to the past. It's no longer something that you buy to add to your collection, rather it is something that you consume and toss out when the latest fad washes away the fading memories of it.

      "you"? who is "you"? is this what you feel is how "it" is designed to work these days or something? is this what "you" are doing? (although, of course, when things where better 'back then' you didnt, and neither did everyone

      • actually, i didnt respond at all to the parents implication that music and albums are bad these days because of the packaging (wtf?) and its lack of intricacy..... re reading his post makes me wonder if his post was a joke anyways.

        the real problem which is that album covers and cases have become cheap plastic "jewel boxes" rather than the more permanent cardboard with intricate artwork on it.

        umm..okay..

        • I was wondering that, too - since the rest of the world never used the "long box" (a nasty kludge designed to help US stores fit CDs into the 12" bins they used for vinyl) in the first place, the implication is that I should think the 'album' died 20 years ago.

          And yet there's somewhere north of 1000 CDs sitting on my shelves.
      • Seven years??? They just release a new album within the last few months.

    • Re:It's dead, Jim (Score:3, Informative)

      by sgant ( 178166 )
      Album is not dead. Case in point: Green Days "American Idiot".

      I'm not a fan of Green Day, I kinda liked their couple of songs that came out a few years ago...but wasn't like a rabid fan. Didn't listen to their other albums and pretty much flew under my radar for many years.

      Then someone got me "American Idiot" for Christmas and I popped it in and WHAM...I was blown away. I mean, I really enjoyed it. And it was a real bona-fide album with an overall theme...remember them?

      Oh well, I see the album going ok.
      • I agree. "American Idiot" restored (or maybe cemented) my faith in the album as an art form. Every so often I'll go back and listen to my old Hybrid Theory CD from Linkin Park from front to back. Brings back memories of high school. For me, listening to an entire album gives me much more than just a single or two (provided, of course, that it's a good album).
        • Pfff.... American idiot would make 1 album out of 10,000,000 in store worth buying then.

          Can you believe going to buy a car, and only 1 car in the entire dealer has all the parts in working order? Albums are dead! People won't pay $15 for 2 good songs and 10 garbage tracks anymore.

          • Maybe its just me, but there a lot of albums (overly themeic collection of songs) worth buying. But then again, I must admit my tastes are far from mainstream and a lot of my music is bought from specialist shops.

            Latest Einstuerzende Neubauten album, all of Lustmords work, Blacklung, Snog et al..

            Which may prove various points in this series of comments. Albums are becoming sidelined, CDs are being designed (within the mainstream) as a means to promote a bunch of songs and hoping a few singles come out o

          • Most of the songs I really like are the ones that I didn't hear until I bought the album...

    • The fact that most artists suck these days (Rush? Tool? These are good??)

      Well, never heard of Tool, but Rush are still only one of 2 or 3 artists that I will make a point of buying the latest release, or go to see live.

      I think that the album is still a convenient package for music. I can't be bothered hunting around for single tracks to build my own playlist. I'll find a good artist I like (yes, Rush - mod me down for being too 1980s if you wish) and trust them to put together a set of music that hangs t

    • the real problem which is that album covers and cases have become cheap plastic "jewel boxes" rather than the more permanent cardboard with intricate artwork on it.

      Ummm. Please explain this to me. If you are refering to those old "long boxes," I am glad that those have gone the way of the dinosaurs. If, on the other hand, you are contrasting CDs to records, I can, in a certain sense, agree with you. But that is a small price to pay for the ability to have in-car CD players.

    • (Rush? Tool? These are good??)

      It all depends on your perspective. I've actually followed these bands - at least through their respective CD releases, and as I get older I've found that when I find a band's CD that I like, I generally try to find more of their work, since usually a band's sound and/or musicianship is pretty linear from album to album.

      A large portion of my music purchases are to hear songs that a particular artist who I think is "good" has put out in the past. More often than not, I'm pl
    • Rush is considered these days? Maybe 15 or 20 years ago...... and tool's pretty good. But if you want good you have to look. There's tons of good music coming out these days, you just have to know where to look.
    • The fact that most artists suck these days (Rush? Tool? These are good??)

      Maybe my sarcasm detector is broken or something, but what exactly is wrong with Rush or Tool? Or don't you like bands who play actual instruments and write actual songs?
    • >> The fact that most artists suck these days (Rush? Tool?

      Yeah, goddamn those newfangled Rush guys. And the Chambers Brothers and Deep Purple too. Today's bands suck! At least that hot new act Bad Company mentions how "bad" they are in their name. Wish I could say the same about the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and Emerson Lake & Palmer. God if I hear new rock radio play any more ELP, I'm gonna kill someone.

      I hate these new "bands"!

      (seriously dude, could you make a more stupid example?)

    • The only reason for the long box was so that record stores could put CDs in the same bins where they used to put 12" vinyl. Since many record stores have changed to new bins, there is no reason for long box.

      As for Rush and Tool, (1) they are hardly representative of "these days," considering it's been 4 years since Tool released an album and 9 years since Rush did. (2) Just because you don't like Tool and Rush doesn't mean there aren't other artists somewhere who you will like.

  • You're right about the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AudioEfex ( 637163 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @05:45AM (#11627934)
    ...but not about the cause.

    Technology isn't the problem, it's marketing and distribution. Albums are sold on one or two songs because the advertising - radio, clips on MTV, even concerts in most cases - has given us a singles-driven marketplace in a market where singles, for the most part, are no longer available for purchase. How did Britney Spears become the youngest female artist to debut her first album at #1? Because they had been playing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" constantly for six months, but there was no way to purchase it. By the time the album dropped, the demand had built to such a point most people never clicked past the first couple of songs (at least not more than once).

    Because the suits are only concerned with marketing, they don't care how crappy the rest of the album is as long as there are one or two decent singles. This has led to the decline of the album because most artists don't have the power - or even desire - to do anything better.

    So no, technology hasn't done this. Sure, technology makes it easier to shuffle songs around and mix them to our own desires, but most of us desire to listen to the music in the way it was intended or that provides the most fufilling listening experience; in this age of flash marketing it's just that many artists don't produce albums that benefit from being played in order, in most cases much of the disc usually isn't worth playing at all.

    I don't blame this on the fact that technology allows me flexibility to customize my listening experience, I blame it on the producers and record companies that don't give me a reason not to.

    AE

  • Not because you think, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bin_jammin ( 684517 ) <Binjammin@gmail.com> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @05:48AM (#11627948)
    the death of full recorded albums is not due to any new marketing trends, it's because by and large bands aren't making albums anymore. This will surely feed the flames, but I can't recall the last time I bought anything that flowed together as a single work, regardless of what track I was listening to. I recall things like Metallica's Black, Chili Pepper's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Houses of the Holy, and I think of how much they were great albums. I scratch my head when I think of anything else I've bought that was recorded in the past ten years that was even close to that level of completeness.
    • You should check out Pearl Jam's Yield [sonymusic.com]. It's loosely based on the book Ishmael [ishmael.com], buy Daniel Quinn.

      I have friends who positively hate Pearl Jam that love this album.

    • I've bought a lot of stuff in the last ten years that has great album flow/unified-work appeal. I've also bought very little that was released by major labels, and instead get a lot of stuff from small bands on indy labels where they're driven by their own desire to produce great music, and aren't forced to do what some label exec thinks is going to sell.

      A few of my recent favorites:
      100 Watt Smile - two different albums, one called 100 Watt Smile, the other is "...and Reason Flew"
      Gram Rabbit - Music to St
    • Nearly anything Dream Theater has ever released falls into that description...

      Their albums are always highly integrated with each song following off the previous one. Infact two of them are infact Rock opera where the entire album is infact a story. (Metropolis pt2, and 6 Degrees)...

      Rush's last studio Album (Vapor Trails) was highly integrated, a sort of struge and rebirth thing, although admittedly the connection isn't entire understood unless you read Ghost Rider the Book that Neil peart wrote at the s
    • I recall things like Metallica's Black, Chili Pepper's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Houses of the Holy, and I think of how much they were great albums. I scratch my head when I think of anything else I've bought that was recorded in the past ten years that was even close to that level of completeness.

      OK Computer.
    • Depending on your tastes, you may agree disagree with one or more on this list. Some are obviously better than others, namely, Queens of the Stone Age. I believe all fall within your 10 year window.
      • Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf
      • Blue Man Group: The Complex
      • Poe: Haunted
      • Nine Inch Nails: The Fragile
      • Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream
      • 3 Doors Down: The Better Life
      • Depeche Mode: Violator
      • Godsmack: Godsmack
      • Green Day: American Idiot
      • Hole: Celebrity Skin
      • Marylin Manson: Mechanical Animals
      • Orgy: Cand

  • No way in hell. It's better than ever. (Score:5, Informative)

    by iainl ( 136759 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @05:49AM (#11627951)
    What is dying is singles. Just look at the sales figures; internet downloads (legal and illegal) are killing the CD single off bigtime. Not surprising when (to use UK figures) it is 3-4 pounds for the disc, with only 2 B-sides (usually remixes that few care about), or 79p for the track you actually want from iTunes (assuming you don't just copy it).

    Meanwhile, everyone who wants actual physical product in their hands buys albums, which have come down significantly in price in recent years. Here in the UK, sales measured by number of actual discs sold are well up; it's only when the record companies are doing their "piracy is killing us, honest" that they go on about how they haven't seen a huge increase in sales by value.
    • Meanwhile, everyone who wants actual physical product in their hands buys albums

      At some point i just stopped buying CDs because i had little space to store them, but i still prefer to have the music on a nice physical product with artwork/lyrics/whatever. I feel the total package has extra value (instead of just being able to listen to the songs on your computer or from a CDR/iPod/etc).

    • CD Singles as a form might be dying. The concept, however, has simply changed form (from vinyl to tape to CD to downloadable mp3 and AAC files) and is in growth.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @05:56AM (#11627974)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'm sure it's been said before, but I believe that those wanting a quick fix of music (The Single or one hit wonders) will get it from the net in an mp3 or equivalent. This is where your top 100 and one hit wonders will make money. I don't think the album will die but with formats like DVD-Audio and SACD, it will move from CD to some higher quality format for those who want more than you can get with mp3. This is where the longer lasting, arguably better artists will make there money.... Just my .02....
      • DVD-A and SACD still aren't doing particularly well, however. I seriously considered getting a player recently myself, as at least there are a couple of albums on the formats that I would actually purchase at last.

        However, a bit of A/B listening demonstrated that the same amount of money spent on a decent CD player (I went for NAD's superlative 521BEE) gave a better sound than what would have been a low-end everything player, with the added advantage of not buying all my albums over again.

        CDs, on good equ
        • I don't consider that I spent a heap of money on my DVD-Audio/SACD/CD Player, the Pioneer 667A, but comparing audio, even taking away surround sound, there's no comparison. As an example, comparing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon's SACD layer to the CD layer on the same disk, there's much more dynamics with the SACD layer. I'll admit having a decent Amp/Speaker set up will help no end. I'm interested in what album you did your A/B comparison with, and what equipment you own, I haven't spent a heap on a
          • I was using the dual-format Medulla album, from Bjork for SACD; I didn't have anything on DVD-A I really wanted to listen to.

            Comparisons were between the NAD 521BEE for CD, and the Pioneer DV-575 multi-format player for SACD, all going into a Pioneer 5-channel amp (I forget the model) and Celestion speakers all round.

            Just using the Pioneer, the SACD layer did sound better than CD, yes - but the NAD made as much improvement to the sound, if not moreso. Since I'd rather have the discs I already own sound gr
    • I miss B-sides

      Me too. I used to buy singles fairly regularly JUST FOR the b-sides. In many cases I already owned the album and wanted some of the stuff that they hadn't thought should go on the album. Bands like the Wildhearts [thewildhearts.co.uk] would regularly put record brand new songs for the B sides. Then bad things happened... the BPI introduced rules [franken.de] limiting what could be released as a single to be eligible for the chart. Naturally this means B-Sides get thrown to the wayside and a crappy remix gets thtown in to ma

    • Not Really Dying (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MarkedMan ( 523274 )
      All things in life are cyclical. When I was a kid in the 60's and 70's, singles were king. There were a number of bands who had hit singles who had either no album or albums with abysmal sales. Radio stations needed singles as that's what they were set up to play. I have a bunch of singles not generally released, but for use by DJ's to promote an album. Along came the AOR (Album Oriented Rock) stations as the audience matured, and album sales picked up substantially. These stations might not have had mo

  • well... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    2000 bloggers can't be wrong.

  • I still refuse to buy music online. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2005 @06:02AM (#11627988)
    I still buy the original, full CDs.

    Amazingly in this digital age, some of us still have CD players. I rip everything I buy - all my music is on my computer and I listen there or on my MP3 player. But I like to have the originals in a lossless, archivable physical format. Not to mention that I still have a CD changer in my car.

    However - the second they start encoding the CDs I buy with "copy protection" that makes it impossible - or a hassle - to rip my CDs, that's probably when I'll switch to buying music online and do something like wiring up an iPod to my car. All DRM will do is kill the brick & mortar retailers.
    • But I like to have the originals in a lossless, archivable physical format.

      I also still buy everything in CD format. Keep in mind, however, that CDs are not "archivable"--they degrade with time.
    • I still buy the original, full CDs.

      Amazingly in this digital age, some of us still have CD players. I rip everything I buy - all my music is on my computer and I listen there or on my MP3 player. But I like to have the originals in a lossless, archivable physical format. Not to mention that I still have a CD changer in my car.

      However - the second they start encoding the CDs I buy with "copy protection" that makes it impossible - or a hassle - to rip my CDs, that's probably when I'll switch to buying music
  • because your average pop star releases a few decent (or at least good selling songs) and the rest of the album is just fillers. If your a fan of Enigma or Paul van Dyk who always sequence thier album or Dj Tiesto who usually mixes them you will see that the Album is far more than just a collection of songs. I often refuse to listen to snippets of an album like those and always listen to it in full
  • ...but i don't hope so. It's often interesting to hear a song more then twice, and find out that its even better then those smash hit u hear everyday. its very difficult to find those gems if u are not forced to listen to them, cause u didn't buy thw whole album. but thats just my opinion.

  • MTV get off the air (Score:3, Insightful)

    by obsol33t ( 550660 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @07:10AM (#11628188)
    With a youth culture that, for the most part, has been force fed their musical tastes so that they will buy what Viacom is pushing, I am not surprised that some are predicting the end of the album. Rant.end() I have learned that there is nothing better in the world than exploring my own musical tastes and have found the internet a blessing in this regard. If an album sucks except for one song it can't escape internet reviews.
    • "Hi...I'm your video dj. I wear this satin jacket everywhere I go." :)

      What kills me is the way they try to force the crap everywhere. Look at...Scooby Doo 2. Shaggy and Scooby go into a bar for villians that the gang had put away...and it's all hiphop. Yeah...all those tough old bad guys are sure to hang out like that. But hell---at the end of the movie they have that Ruben Studdard from American Idol doing a song - no...it's not at all about trying to force things down the throats!
    • I'm a teenager in Australia....what is it that kids over in America have that is *THAT* bad? We've got Shannon Knoll over here, I'm sure that he has destroyed more people than any of the stuff over in the US ;)

  • What is a album? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pjay_dml ( 710053 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @07:31AM (#11628249) Journal
    If we use the term in the sense of a plastic disc with a bunch of songs....yes

    If we use the term to capture a set of songs, that toghether form a story....no

    We become so involved with the now, that we forget why we actually started doing things the way we do.

    In the end...nothing but semantics!

  • Did concept of an album change? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dr.Opveter ( 806649 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @07:43AM (#11628291)

    I listen to a lot of electronic music and with some styles like drum & bass for instance, the album concept never really has been a big thing there. Tracks are released on 12" mostly.

    With other genres though, many albums are a concept of music/art (rather than a bunch of songs randomly put together on a disk, slapped together in an appealing package). For artists there's usually a whole process of creating the album, and often there's a story told througout the songs on an album. I don't think this will change much with new technology.

  • I don't think the ebook will kill the novella (when/if the ebook becomes popular, that is), and new ways of distributing music won't kill the album. Both exist because of the constraints and capabilities of a certain technology, but thay also make sense independently of that.

    However, digital media will probably create new ways of packaging music, that weren't practical during the vinyl/CD era. But the album will still exist.

    At least for rock band (and such), it's a pretty natural way of working. You write

  • ADD'ing of America (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @07:53AM (#11628325)
    I think a lot of this has to do with the ever-increasing media machine slowly giving everyone A.D.D. You can't watch television or listen to the radio without having your senses routinely assaulted. This makes it difficult to concentrate on any one thing, and as a result, the populace tends to get tired of products at a much faster pace, and has begun to expect instant replacements that are more exciting.

    I think these things come and go in cycles. Right now we're in a depression when it comes to things like quality, social consciousness, creativity and the product forms that represent the latest advances in these areas. There are always exceptions, like the iPod which is compensating for the lack of good music by enabling new generations to discover older, better-crafted music. I see much of the new technology ending up exposing people to a more "golden age" of music/media where people subscribed to bands and albums instead of formulaic, over-produced singles.

    Perhaps we'll see younger kids getting into more 60s music... that was about the last time an artist that could write an anti-war song and get any airplay. Maybe when corporate america sees the money they're losing by "playing it safe" with their "art" they might start giving interesting, inciteful artists a chance to share the spotlight with the current crop of plastic automatons.

    • Re:ADD'ing of America (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sootman ( 158191 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:27PM (#11632906) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, you're right. Singles didn't exist before August 1, 1981. The Beatles and Elvis never released 45s.

      Please, take off your rose-colored glasses. The past, viewed from the present, is always a "golden age" and the present always sucks. (Except for when the recent past is "the low point of X" and the present is "the beginning of a new era of greatness.") There were countless "schlock rock" bands back then. Not everyone was the Rolling Stones and Greatful Dead. You remember them because they were good, not because they came from an era when everything was great. What, you think Starship and Hendrix were the only people who made albums in the 60s?

      It is the default mode of history for the greatness of an era to be what everyone remembers. It is the flaw of amateur historians to think that the great stuff that lasts is representative of the era.

      You think the present sucks because you are here to experience it all and you're hearing everything, the good and the bad. You think the past was great because you turn on the oldies station and all you hear is good music. There's a reason you only hear the same few hundred songs on the oldies station. Do you think the whole country only produced 1 song per week from 1954 to 1973?

      PS: formulaic, over-produced singles [wikipedia.org] are not new, either.

      • Re:ADD'ing of America (Score:3, Informative)

        by mabu ( 178417 )
        Don't put words in my mouth. I never said singles didn't exist in the past. I also never said there was no exploitation or over-produced music in the past either.

        However, I don't have my head up my ass and am not an apologist for the obnoxious corporate media consolidation that is increasing at a rapid pace. And yes there were "music mafia" in the past, but the market was not sewn up like it is now. There IS a difference. An artist like Bob Dylan WOULD HAVE NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER OF GETTING AIRPLAY TODA
        • An artist like Bob Dylan WOULD HAVE NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER OF GETTING AIRPLAY TODAY.

          ...and an artist like Enimem would've had no chance whatsoever of getting airplay in 1963. (Not to mention the entirety of rap, metal, and modern "dance" music.)

      • What, you think Starship and Hendrix were the only people who made albums in the 60s?

        Starship????

        Perhaps you meant Jefferson Airplane?

        Kids nowadays can't get anything straight...

  • The music of today (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @08:14AM (#11628393) Homepage
    I've read a couple of comments saying negative things about "the music of today" and such.

    Stop!

    Don't you understand that this is exactly what your parents thought of your music? And their parents before them? And so forth?

    You're getting old, buddy.
    Too old to just listen to the music.
    Too old to enjoy music.

    I'm not a big fan or R&B and rap, but once in a while a good track comes along and I will enjoy that track.
    Wouldn't it be a shame of you would deprive yourself of the vast richness that is music, just because you don't want to keep an open mind to what is out there?
    You're missing out on a lot of great music just because you're stuck to a nostalgic notion of what music should be like.

    • True, there's some good stuff out there.
      Don't forget there's also a lot of amazing music from the past. Kids today don't always get to hear that music, i mean they won't show it on MTV.

      You say new R&B and rap might be worth a listen sometimes, i say listen to oldskool Soul Sonic Force, Diamond D, Grandmaster Flash as well. Green Day and Limp Bizkit are among the popular bands now, but kids don't hear Dead Kennedies or Bad Religion much on their MTV.

      I'm getting old, and of course i look back a say th

    • LOL. It's not about disliking TYPES of music, it's the varying quality of music within that genre, by the same artists I think most people are talking about.

      Example - let's use the CD I talked about earlier, Britney's BOMT. I like pop/bubblegum/etc. type of music. BOMT is a damn fine song - just try to get it out of your head. There are a couple of other songs - like Crazy and one or two ballads that are nice. The rest of the album? Filler. Half-finished songs with bad hooks and barely coherent lyr

    • Don't you understand that this is exactly what your parents thought of your music? And their parents before them? And so forth?

      Sure, I think everyone understands that at some level.

      The difference is, my parents didn't start to think contemporary music sucked in their twenties. The RIAA has turned the "generation gap" into a 30-day grace period.
    • Guilty, your honour.

      I was cruising along the interstate a couple of days ago, rocking out to Queen's greatest hits II, thinking to myself "Now this is real music, not like that rubbish you get these days", when

      WOAH!

      I've turned into my father! When did this happen??
    • I'm 15 now...and I'd agree about most music now being shit...
      Green Day, Jet, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are an exception though ;)
  • As far as the listener is concerned, Napster tried to kill it, BitTorrent brought it back to life, and music stores are killing it again.

  • I don't think so... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jpop32 ( 596022 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @08:29AM (#11628447)
    Do you think the traditional music album is dying out because of advances in technology?

    Nope. As long as artists that have something substantial to say exist, there will be albums.

    If one's only source of new music is MTV and crap like that, one may think that the albums are a thing of the past. But, that's about the same as eating only in McDonald's and thinking that traditional gourmet cuisine is dying out.

    Market for music is much, much bigger than Top40. In fact, if anything, advances in technology, enabling the Long Tail phenomenon (http://www.thelongtail.com/ [thelongtail.com]) will do just the opposite. When everyone can trivially access every bit of music ever recorded, albums will have a much easier time finding an audience.

    Sure, some forms of music will never be strong on albums (dance, club oriented music), but again, they don't represent the majority of music out there.

  • only for shitty music (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ender Ryan ( 79406 ) <TOKYO minus city> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @08:45AM (#11628506) Journal
    The death of the album may be real, but only for pop chart targeted music. The fact is, most artists making the pop charts suck and do nothing but regurgitate the same old crap, and have a "hit" when they get the "formula" right.

    What I'm talking about is the "music" that can be tested with that silly audio analysis program Slashdot had a story about several weeks ago.

    But is the album dead? Of course not. To most artists, a single track by itself is only part of a whole, not a standalone work of art.

    There's plenty of good music out there, you just have to look for it. Don't let them shove the top 40 down your throats.

    • Well said, well said. Albums are the only way the folk music world functions in terms of recordings - live performance is also a significant thing of course. Folk artists tend to work on themes and stories just like albums should be. Some are collections of tunes or songs (or both) with a theme, or from a specific place and time. Others really do tell a story (Maddy Prior does a lot of that these days).

      The distribution media will change - just like the change from vinyl to CD - but the concepts will still
    • Exactly. For a very long time, maybe forever, there will be an audience of people who care about songs in context, and these people will buy albums. The rest will revert to a 50's like disjointedness, where they care about songs only. So what? There is more space for alternate distribution models now than there ever has been. It's going to be quite hard to "kill" anything.

  • Endless, Circular Argument (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @08:54AM (#11628536)
    This is an endless circular argument. The "Death of the Album" has been talked about for the past fifteen years at least, and it doesn't happen.

    Even if you look at Billboard's Top 200 [billboard.com] chart you're going to see a lot of, well, albums.

    If anything, I would imagine the re-birth of the album. As single tracks are easier to get and download (and not pay $7 for a CDS with four tracks), artists will focus on the album.

    But we'll have the same mix we've always had. About twenty percent of good and great stuff, twenty percent of really awful stuff, and sixty percent of material that might have a good song or two but is ultimately forgettable.

  • Take the view that an album is a record of artistic work from a period in time by one group of artists. That won't disappear easily. Even if the songs are produced one after the other and made available in online in small batches, there will be a collection at a later point (like a series box for a tv show).

    But for sales-oriented radio-play music, where the album tracks are filler material and seen as unimportant, I can see the album disappearing because the investors in the b(r)and don't want to throw m
  • Out of 40-some-odd posts, none mentioning anything other than pop music -- and by that I mean rock, hiphop, rap, Asslee Simpson, etc. There are other forms of music on albums, you know. The classical industry, while not as huge as maybe it was 15 years ago, is still chugging along, and nobody's predicting the death of jazz albums. (The death of jazz, maybe, but not of the albums.) Oh, also?

    I can't recall the last time I bought anything that flowed together as a single work

    Who says that an album has to

  • It's possible that in 50 or 100 years that musicians and fans won't be listening to the Beatles, Frank Sinatra or even The Clash, etc. But if they are, they will certainly view the work of 20th century artists in terms of their "albums," in the same way we view Shakespeare's plays or Beethoven's symphonies as discrete works of art.

    As for newer artists, even though the means exist now for them to do away with "albums", they still overwhelmingly choose to present their work that way. The reason for this
  • Who uses vinyl anymore? (Braces himself for the barrage of attacks)

  • It's all about the live act now... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by smug_lisp_weenie ( 824771 ) * <cbarski.4503440@bloglines.com> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:22AM (#11630108) Homepage
    "Bands" that can't put on a decent live show aren't real bands anyway. If you can play live well, there will always be opportunities for you. recorded music is just going to become an advert for live performances.
  • Well, I really can't generalize, so I'll just speak for my self.

    " Do you think the traditional music album is dying out because of advances in technology?"

    No. The traditional music album died the day I bought an album with only one song I liked on it. Advances in technology renewed my interest in music by making it more cost effective to me, but they're not responsible for my lack of interest in albums.

  • "Is X dead/dying?" questions... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bscott ( 460706 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @01:44PM (#11632317)
    Why not ask: SHOULD the album be dead? The march of technology produces new devides, formats and gadgetry while message boards, newspapers and water-cooler chats decry the death of one thing or another. Progress does not do this because it ceases to like the old; it simply produces improvements, and the ones which people at large decide represent something "better" survive and flourish.

    I don't know much about music, but to me the arguments sound a lot like "is the floppy disk dead?" - well, arguably it is. Do any of us want it back? Game and application manufacturers used to be constrained by the storage capacity of disks, and often came up with ingenius optimizations (or were forced to leave out unnecessary frills) to do so. They don't have to do that any more. The value of the results of this I leave as an exercise to the reader, but I would still not go back to having floppies as my only option.

    If musicians could tell a story with the selection of songs on the album as a whole, it was because their talent allowed them to find a means of expressing their thoughts which fit within the boundaries of the medium - an ~hourlong LP that you had to flip over halfway through. I bet those same artists can and will find entirely new means of expression to fit within the boundaries of today, and tomorrow.

    You can still buy a spinning wheel if you want to process your own wool. The fact that the vast majority of people in this country prefer not to doesn't mean that we, as a society, have "lost" the spinning wheel.
  • Why is a collection of songs in a single release called an 'album'?

    Because before the long playing 33.3 rpm record the only way to make such a release was a collection of discrete 78 rpm records. The collection was packaged in a book, that looked much like a 'photo album'. These collections were grouped two ways, one in which the tracks were ordered with consectutive numbers on individual discs so they would be played in order on a record changer. The other grouping was for playing them on a manual pla
  • Why wouldn't the same have happened after the advent of the 45, or the cassette single, or the CDS?

    Fans of bands will still buy their albums, just as they will go to their concerts, just as they always have.
  • A collegue tole me he recently told his whining daughter that she sounded like, "a broken record." Her reply: "What's a record?"

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