7 ms·

[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long interludes, and

by dhimes 9y ago

[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long interludes, and the idea of a body of work that builds on a theme.

ben_straub 9y ago
Yeah, this makes me sad. I mostly listen to music when I'm working, and hearing the same mix of 50 "top hits" gets tiring really fast. 45-60 minutes of music that has some similarity and continuity is WAY better.
jgforbes 9y ago
If this were true, wouldn't radio have had the same affect?
- paublyrne 9y ago
  Radio used to be advertising for albums. Two are three singles from an album would get featured over the course of 6 to 9 months and if you liked them you'd buy the full album.
- sbuttgereit 9y ago
  Yes, though a radio station would often times start with an intro and let the record play through the next track (speaking as a child of the 70's when progressive rock / concept albums were at their peak). DJs & programming directors knew that certain tracks would not make sense on their own and would adjust. I have a hunch that it's not streaming that's really responsible, per se, but the "Shuffle" function that's been available since the CD player. I tend to have a large playlist and more often than not, I set it to shuffle the tracks. But I did essentially the same thing when I had a 60 CD changer years ago, too. I think this trend probably started there, accelerated when MP3s and ripped CDs became popular (prior to steaming services) and streaming is just the next step in that progression. The way we consume other media is likely to part of this as well, so saying it's streaming is perhaps a bit of a stretch even if streaming makes it possible to jump more easily. (for the record I have not read the article, though I scanned it to be sure they were talking about streaming services).
  - failrate 9y ago
    SiriusXM's Beatles channel plays pairs of songs together when that is the norm on the radio. Some White Album songs basically lead into each other, iirc.
  - cbm-vic-20 9y ago
    Queen's "We Will Rock You"/"We Are The Champions", Boston's "Foreplay"/"Long Time", and Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius"/"Eye in the Sky" are examples of this. It's almost strange to only hear one half of the pair, and in the case of Foreplay and Sirius, those are completely instrumental.
    - EADGBE 9y ago
      Good radio stations still honor these unwritten requirements. Also, "Eruption"/"Running with the Devil", too.
- dizzystar 9y ago
  You didn't have much choice back then. A few songs were released as single tapes, but a full album wasn't much more expensive, plus many stores did not carry singles, or if they did, the selection was often small. There was no concept of a single CD.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    That's not quite true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_single https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_single But they were never very popular.
    - dizzystar 9y ago
      interesting. learn something new everyday.
  - SyneRyder 9y ago
    Not to jump on, but there were definitely single CDs - the singles charts (Top 40) were compiled from the sale of CD Singles (and Cassingles, as the cassette versions were called). A #1 hit was determined by who sold the most CD singles, not albums - which is why pop music dominated the Top 10 singles charts, but rock bands would dominate the Top 10 albums. In Australia, a CD single cost $5 up to $10, while an album cost $30. Also, CD singles were collectors items, because they would often come with bonus tracks that weren't available on the album or anywhere else. Sometimes they were just live recordings, but sometimes they were fully produced studio recordings that didn't quite make the cut for the album, but were still amazing. (Nirvana's "Even In His Youth" jumps to mind, as well as The Prodigy & Tom Morello collaboration "No Man Army".) I still remember my local 2nd-hand CD shop selling a rare Nirvana CD single for $100, and as a kid wishing I could afford to buy it.
differonzi 9y ago
More directly, it has hurt the monetization of those concepts, which inevitably affects their popularity. The concept of the album is still dear enough to many people that there it will continue to exist in the fringes until something else comes along.
pradn 9y ago
I think that was true for the iTunes years before Spotify and other streaming services came along. Before, you had to pay for each song so you picked just a few you liked. Now, it's just as easy to play the whole album as to play one song. (In facts, it's easier to queue up an album than to play one song at a time since you have to choose what to play fewer times per time interval.) Anecdotally, we've seen whole-album concepts become big hits in recent years: Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, Kanye West's Life of Pablo, Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book, etc. On top of that, almost all hip-hop songs these days have intro tags (which producers worked on the song.) Not instrumental of course, but non-song content none-the-less.
- dhimes 9y ago
  That's great to hear (heh). I haven't used those services because I buy albums and listen to college radio. But when Pandora first came out I was pretty blown away.
- ghaff 9y ago
  On still the other hand though, an awful lot of people these days just cue up some music style or artist as opposed to choosing what specifically to play. I know that's what I tend to do. I think it's hard to argue against the idea that the album concept has mostly declined in relevance since its heyday.
  - Kadin 9y ago
    I'm sure lots of people do that, but it's actually easier with the streaming services to listen to an entire album than it was a few years ago when iTunes 99c/song was the dominant model. Pay-per-song encouraged playlists and "greatest hits" type mix CDs, but didn't encourage anyone to purchase B-sides or interstitial tracks. At least with services like Spotify et al, you aren't paying per track, so you have the option of listening to a whole album as a single body of work. Of course, not everyone wants to do that, which is cool.
- stefanpie 9y ago
  Also wanted to mention logics new album, Everybody, and his previous album, The Incredible True Story, are great example of the whole-album concept but specifically interweaving storytelling into the album idea which I believe made the albums much more engaging and enjoyable to listen to.
JKCalhoun 9y ago
I feel like the long intro-outro are better reserved for the live performance and I thought this long before digital singles.
drb91 9y ago
I suppose there’s more emphasis on streaming and singles, but when someone actually aims for an album, it’s as good as ever. If you want to avoid this, just don’t listen to popularity based radios like spotify. EDIT: Apparently it's not popularity based. I still find it's difficult to avoid single-oriented contemporary music. Ironically I've found pandora to be pretty good at this. Just ordered two new vinyl LPs this month :)
- kp1234321 9y ago
  Spotify is not a popularity-based radio. It includes that feature, but in my opinion the product is more suited for selective listening. Maybe you meant to say Pandora?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
cjsuk 9y ago
Streaming allows you to pull the whole album rather than making arbitrary choices though which is a good thing. It has however wrecked my attention span which I’m trying to fix. I bought a CD player with a monitor output and some CDs and some nice headphones. I can actually enjoy my favourite albums now.
rainbowmverse 9y ago
I've sold about 12 albums (though most are closer to traditional EP length). Never sold a single. I remember seeing some data that said that was the norm on Bandcamp. I think albums are doing fine, but maybe the amalgam of loosely connected musical product that most albums are is not working anymore. All the albums I've sold have had a clear narrative thread going through it, while all the random assortments I did early on never sold.
- noobermin 9y ago
  It's almost as if it varies by genre and there is no hard and fast rule if you're talking about all music.
mikewhy 9y ago
I love albums: concept albums and gapless albums especially. I think limited storage space on mp3 players did more to damage albums than digital purchases.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I think that was true during a window of time. When MP3 players first came out, you selectively ripped songs because of storage limitations and didn't just fill MP3 players with complete albums as might have been natural to do. Napster, etc. also encouraged a shift to individual songs before iTunes took off. In any case, for the most part, people were weaned off of the album concept which, after all, was a construct that was primarily a function of how music was delivered and sold.
noobermin 9y ago
I used to think this until I listened to a lot more older music. A lot of pop records cut in the 50s to 60s had no "theme" other than the generic love/sex/dancing themes common to all pop music. I think the concept albums we know now are a few of exceptional concept albums that are just as uncommon then as they were now.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  The technology advancement allowed the concept of a concept album.

by dhimes 9y ago

ben_straub 9y ago

Yeah, this makes me sad. I mostly listen to music when I'm working, and hearing the same mix of 50 "top hits" gets tiring really fast. 45-60 minutes of music that has some similarity and continuity is WAY better.

jgforbes 9y ago

If this were true, wouldn't radio have had the same affect?

paublyrne 9y ago
Radio used to be advertising for albums. Two are three singles from an album would get featured over the course of 6 to 9 months and if you liked them you'd buy the full album.
sbuttgereit 9y ago
Yes, though a radio station would often times start with an intro and let the record play through the next track (speaking as a child of the 70's when progressive rock / concept albums were at their peak). DJs & programming directors knew that certain tracks would not make sense on their own and would adjust. I have a hunch that it's not streaming that's really responsible, per se, but the "Shuffle" function that's been available since the CD player. I tend to have a large playlist and more often than not, I set it to shuffle the tracks. But I did essentially the same thing when I had a 60 CD changer years ago, too. I think this trend probably started there, accelerated when MP3s and ripped CDs became popular (prior to steaming services) and streaming is just the next step in that progression. The way we consume other media is likely to part of this as well, so saying it's streaming is perhaps a bit of a stretch even if streaming makes it possible to jump more easily. (for the record I have not read the article, though I scanned it to be sure they were talking about streaming services).
- failrate 9y ago
  SiriusXM's Beatles channel plays pairs of songs together when that is the norm on the radio. Some White Album songs basically lead into each other, iirc.
- cbm-vic-20 9y ago
  Queen's "We Will Rock You"/"We Are The Champions", Boston's "Foreplay"/"Long Time", and Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius"/"Eye in the Sky" are examples of this. It's almost strange to only hear one half of the pair, and in the case of Foreplay and Sirius, those are completely instrumental.
  - EADGBE 9y ago
    Good radio stations still honor these unwritten requirements. Also, "Eruption"/"Running with the Devil", too.
dizzystar 9y ago
You didn't have much choice back then. A few songs were released as single tapes, but a full album wasn't much more expensive, plus many stores did not carry singles, or if they did, the selection was often small. There was no concept of a single CD.
- ghaff 9y ago
  That's not quite true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_single https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_single But they were never very popular.
  - dizzystar 9y ago
    interesting. learn something new everyday.
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  Not to jump on, but there were definitely single CDs - the singles charts (Top 40) were compiled from the sale of CD Singles (and Cassingles, as the cassette versions were called). A #1 hit was determined by who sold the most CD singles, not albums - which is why pop music dominated the Top 10 singles charts, but rock bands would dominate the Top 10 albums. In Australia, a CD single cost $5 up to $10, while an album cost $30. Also, CD singles were collectors items, because they would often come with bonus tracks that weren't available on the album or anywhere else. Sometimes they were just live recordings, but sometimes they were fully produced studio recordings that didn't quite make the cut for the album, but were still amazing. (Nirvana's "Even In His Youth" jumps to mind, as well as The Prodigy & Tom Morello collaboration "No Man Army".) I still remember my local 2nd-hand CD shop selling a rare Nirvana CD single for $100, and as a kid wishing I could afford to buy it.

differonzi 9y ago

More directly, it has hurt the monetization of those concepts, which inevitably affects their popularity. The concept of the album is still dear enough to many people that there it will continue to exist in the fringes until something else comes along.

pradn 9y ago

I think that was true for the iTunes years before Spotify and other streaming services came along. Before, you had to pay for each song so you picked just a few you liked. Now, it's just as easy to play the whole album as to play one song. (In facts, it's easier to queue up an album than to play one song at a time since you have to choose what to play fewer times per time interval.) Anecdotally, we've seen whole-album concepts become big hits in recent years: Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, Kanye West's Life of Pablo, Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book, etc. On top of that, almost all hip-hop songs these days have intro tags (which producers worked on the song.) Not instrumental of course, but non-song content none-the-less.

dhimes 9y ago
That's great to hear (heh). I haven't used those services because I buy albums and listen to college radio. But when Pandora first came out I was pretty blown away.
ghaff 9y ago
On still the other hand though, an awful lot of people these days just cue up some music style or artist as opposed to choosing what specifically to play. I know that's what I tend to do. I think it's hard to argue against the idea that the album concept has mostly declined in relevance since its heyday.
- Kadin 9y ago
  I'm sure lots of people do that, but it's actually easier with the streaming services to listen to an entire album than it was a few years ago when iTunes 99c/song was the dominant model. Pay-per-song encouraged playlists and "greatest hits" type mix CDs, but didn't encourage anyone to purchase B-sides or interstitial tracks. At least with services like Spotify et al, you aren't paying per track, so you have the option of listening to a whole album as a single body of work. Of course, not everyone wants to do that, which is cool.
stefanpie 9y ago
Also wanted to mention logics new album, Everybody, and his previous album, The Incredible True Story, are great example of the whole-album concept but specifically interweaving storytelling into the album idea which I believe made the albums much more engaging and enjoyable to listen to.

JKCalhoun 9y ago

I feel like the long intro-outro are better reserved for the live performance and I thought this long before digital singles.

drb91 9y ago

I suppose there’s more emphasis on streaming and singles, but when someone actually aims for an album, it’s as good as ever. If you want to avoid this, just don’t listen to popularity based radios like spotify. EDIT: Apparently it's not popularity based. I still find it's difficult to avoid single-oriented contemporary music. Ironically I've found pandora to be pretty good at this. Just ordered two new vinyl LPs this month :)

kp1234321 9y ago
Spotify is not a popularity-based radio. It includes that feature, but in my opinion the product is more suited for selective listening. Maybe you meant to say Pandora?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

cjsuk 9y ago

Streaming allows you to pull the whole album rather than making arbitrary choices though which is a good thing. It has however wrecked my attention span which I’m trying to fix. I bought a CD player with a monitor output and some CDs and some nice headphones. I can actually enjoy my favourite albums now.

rainbowmverse 9y ago

I've sold about 12 albums (though most are closer to traditional EP length). Never sold a single. I remember seeing some data that said that was the norm on Bandcamp. I think albums are doing fine, but maybe the amalgam of loosely connected musical product that most albums are is not working anymore. All the albums I've sold have had a clear narrative thread going through it, while all the random assortments I did early on never sold.

noobermin 9y ago
It's almost as if it varies by genre and there is no hard and fast rule if you're talking about all music.

mikewhy 9y ago

I love albums: concept albums and gapless albums especially. I think limited storage space on mp3 players did more to damage albums than digital purchases.

ghaff 9y ago
I think that was true during a window of time. When MP3 players first came out, you selectively ripped songs because of storage limitations and didn't just fill MP3 players with complete albums as might have been natural to do. Napster, etc. also encouraged a shift to individual songs before iTunes took off. In any case, for the most part, people were weaned off of the album concept which, after all, was a construct that was primarily a function of how music was delivered and sold.

noobermin 9y ago

I used to think this until I listened to a lot more older music. A lot of pop records cut in the 50s to 60s had no "theme" other than the generic love/sex/dancing themes common to all pop music. I think the concept albums we know now are a few of exceptional concept albums that are just as uncommon then as they were now.

EADGBE 9y ago
The technology advancement allowed the concept of a concept album.