Albums are Dead
In his latest post entitled Albums, Bob Lefsetz argues that any artist focusing on making albums is stupid — that it represents old thinking and challenges your ability to stay relevant and grow your fan base. He writes of making albums:
It’s a waste of money. You lose momentum between projects. No one listens to most of the music. You’re in the music business, not the album business.
And the music business is about three or five or even ten minutes of glory. An experience that cannot be denied. Concentrate on constructing that. Then you’ll grow fans.
He’s right. Unfortunately. To me, there’s nothing like a well-constructed album. But the times have changed and the way people consume music is different than it was in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. And the distribution methods available to artists make the album obsolete, at least as a primary format. Technology has changed the game as it always does.
I’d argue that the album has been dying for a long time — essentially since the introduction of the compact disc. Records used to be 45 minutes tops. Even the greatest artists struggled to fill a piece of vinyl with truly great music. Albums like Dark Side of the Moon have always been rare. Double albums like Exile on Main Street even rarer. The CD added another 20 minutes to fill, making every album essentially a double. Most bands piled the extra space with garbage.
I think it wore on listeners on a subconscious level. Albums no longer meant well-crafted music projects, establishing a style, evoking a mood. They became a mishmash of great tunes, decent attempts and obvious filler that added up to nothing. Why do I have to buy the whole thing when there’s only a couple of decent tracks anyway?
Now listeners only have to buy or stream the stuff they care about. And seriously, I love Highway to Hell. It’s one of my favorite albums. But who needs Get It Hot?
If I were a band today, I’d be recording everything. In the studio. Live shows. Impromptu jam sessions. Whatever. I’d be capturing it on video. Why not webcast a rehearsal or experimentation in the studio? Maybe I’d only release the best stuff as singles or as mini-sets on iTunes, but I’d invite fans into the whole process of making music. I’d make my website, Facebook page, Twitter account, whatever, a destination — not just a useless discography or source of information about upcoming tour dates. You know, kind of like Ryan Adams does.
