Monday, March 26, 2007

The Album and Musical Revolution

I don’t remember the first album I ever owned, since it was almost certainly a kids album.  I don’t even remember which of the few records I’ve owned was my first, although I think it was Pet Shop Boys, bought halfsies with my sister (who, incidentally, introduced me to Dark Side of the Moon at the same time). My budget was cassette tape focused until I got into high school and college and discovered that CDs didn’t stretch out with massive replaying (my favorite tape at the time, Midnight Oil’s “Blue Sky Mining” album, finally stretched so much that I could hear the music going flat in my player).  But until recently, my purchases have always been album based.

Now, though, with the rise of iTunes and music file sharing, albums may be slowly dying off.  And while part of me actually sees this as a good thing, that feeling is bittersweet.

According to the article linked above, digital singles outsold album CDs for the first time last year.  And Aram Sinnreich, managing partner at media consulting firm Radar Research, says in the article that “Consumers are listening to play lists.... Consumers who have had iPods since they were in the single digits are going to increasingly gravitate toward artists who embrace that.”

Who among us hasn’t bought an album for one song only to discover that the one song was the only good song on the whole album?  Heck, my wife has at least one mix CD titled “Songs I Bought the Whole CD For,” and I could probably pull one or two together myself.  For listeners who have had this experience ten too many times, the (possibly) impending death of the album is probably a good thing.

Thankfully, however, there are people out there who disagree.  Again, the NYTimes article quotes unnamed music execs as saying “...fans of jazz, classical, opera and certain rock (bands like Radiohead and Tool) will demand album-length listening experiences for many years to come.” And those music execs are probably right - some genres will forever be album released.  But the opera and classical markets aren’t in the same league as rock or hip-hop.

Just like I’ve found CDs that sucked badly when compared to the original song I’d bought the album for, there have been albums that I bought for one song that I ended up loving for the other four amazing songs on the album that I never once heard played on the radio.  Add to that the fact that I’m a fan of epic rock and concept albums (The Moody Blues “Nights in White Satin” is a shorter example of this, but Rush’s Hemispheres and 2112, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and, more recently, American Idiot by Green Day are more representative), and I’m sitting here bemoaning all the opportunities I may not have to discover another “Calypso” (Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing album, bought for “Luka"), “God Shuffled His Feet” (Crash Test Dummies’ God Shuffled His Feet album, bought for “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmmm"), or “Grade 9” (Barenaked Ladies’ Gordon album, bought for “If I Had a Million Dollars").

In my case, I’ve had many more experiences where I bought a good album for one good song than experiences where I bought a crappy album for one good song. And so I’m going to miss the album if/when it fades into obscurity.

That being said, however, the supposedly impending death of the music album isn’t entirely a bad thing, for two main reasons.  First, the record lables and RIAA (and RIAA’s international equivalents) have built up their empires on the album, and if the album’s power declines, the music industry will lose a lot of its power at the same time.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s a very good thing. The music industry has been choking the life out of music for so long that killing the lables off wouldn’t bug me in the least.  The emerging realities of the new music industry (iTunes, Rhapsody, MySpace musician pages, etc.) are driving the music industry apoplectic, and it’s been fun to watch the RIAA thrash about trying to stuff multiple genies back into their respective bottles.

The second reason I think that the reduction of the album’s power is ok is that I believe the album-centric music industry has restricted the artistic expression of musicians.  When you have to release albums, when singles are frowned upon if not outright banned, musicians have significant pressure to avoid experimentation.  The only artists who can get away with it are the ones who can afford to have an album crash and burn commercially, which limits the experimentation to only the successful artists (artists like U2 or Barenaked Ladies).  The vast majority of musicians, the ones who have to put food on the table or replace the busted-down touring VW Microbus with the next album, lack the opportunity.

But if singles and digital distribution of music are the new reality, then artists can play around more.  If Green Day had wanted to make “American Idiot” four songs longer, or two shorter, then they could have, without having to worry about overflowing or not filling an 80-minute CD.  And if Assemblage23 had always wanted to do an R&B single but couldn’t afford to leave behind the electronic dance scene, then he could and release it as a single with a note that it was radically different than anything else he’d ever released.

Do I know that it’ll turn out this way?  Of course not - I expect that my music industry crystal ball is cloudier than most.  But the supposedly impending demise of the music album could release musicians one of the shackles that binds them.  I’m hopeful that this could be the start a musical revolution that will leave all of us who enjoy good music that much richer for it.