May 112007
 


So this week the music industry is back to bashing the digitally downloaded single for the continued dropoff in album sales.

Consumers no longer need to buy an album if they want that cool jam they heard on the radio — and in growing numbers, they’re choosing 99-cent downloads over $15 CDs.

Some worry this trend is worsening the quality of albums as a cohesive musical work, and that label executives are more and more interested in quick hits than lasting music or artists.

Am I really to believe that Nickleback, Maroon 5, Gwen Stefani, Nas, et al are really concerned with the cohesiveness of their 15-song, 70-minute releases? If so, who do they think they are? Not even the Beatles and the Stones could stay cohesive over the course of an oldtime double album. What kind of drugs do you need to be on to stay through the 11th track on a Nas album, or are you expected to be a glutton for the “N Word”?

But maybe I’m too cynical. This article contains this passage ripe with optimism over the future of modern album making!

The question remains whether consumers are as interested in completing the albums as they used to.

Ciara hopes so. The 21-year-old’s latest platinum album, “Ciara: The Evolution,” on La Face/Jive Records (a unit of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture between Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE – news). and Bertelsmann AG [Ed. – Not that’s an inspiring parenthetical bit of information we haven’t seen on Rock Town Hall since the days when Berlyant was in his prime! Someone get me a link, fast!]) wasn’t designed to provide just hits, but as an entire experience about her development into a woman, complete with interludes between the tracks.

“For me growing up, there was nothing like listening to an album that you could literally sit down and listen to from the beginning to the end,” she said. “It can’t just be about singles. That’s the purpose of an album, it’s almost like a story within itself.”

Good point, Ciara, but who’s sitting through a complete reading of Ulysses? And I’ve never heard this blossoming woman’s music, but is it really the kind of music meant to be listened to while sitting? Do I have her confused with some dance-pop artist?

Leave it to my girl Avril Lavigne to put things into perspective:

“I’m so all about going to the store and buy a CD.”

“(But) times are changing,” she added. Someday “people aren’t going to do records, they’re just going to do singles, probably.”

By all accounts, she was not lip-synching while quoted for this piece!

Why shouldn’t people stop making albums? In a digitally downloadable age, who’s going to download the penultimate song on “side 2,” also known as the Safe Haven for an Album’s Turd? Unless downloading an entire album was offered at a cheaper price than downloading each track individually, why download the likely turds? You’re given a 30-second sample of each song. If the song doesn’t do it for you in 30 seconds, maybe it doesn’t deserve your time. Maybe artists will stop wasting time with minute-long, finger-picked intros and get down to business.

Beside, most people seem to like carrying their entire music collection on a device that fits in the palm of their hand and can be set to shuffle songs without repeating the same song for 17 years. Let it be, music industry. Enjoy the money you’re raking in. Make more of it. Do more coke. I mean, it’s like, so whatever.

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  5 Responses to “This Week’s Music Industry Scapegoat: The Digital Single”

  1. OH MY GOD. Tina Fey wasn’t joking and there IS a rapper named Chamillionaire?! I’m dying here!! I had no idea! 30 Rock becomes more and more relevant right down to the episode where Kenneth the NBC Page asks if it’s a lesson “like the time when ReRun got caught bootlegging the Doobie Bros.”!!! I haven’t laughed so hard in a while…

  2. Wow, I actually made it through the full 5 minutes of that poop. I’m ready to put my glock in my mouth.

  3. meanstom

    Watching this vid made me wonder if anyone’s making synchonised porn.

  4. Jim, I hope you weren’t being sarcastic with the last sentence of this post, because I agree with it 100%. Let people who make albums make albums and let people who make singles make singles. And if someone thinks people are gonna buy the Ciara concept album, let it ride. The People don’t really think about this stuff one way or the other.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to retreat from this discussion of the brave, new, unprecedented world of the music biz. I shall pour a snifter of cognac, light a cigar and listen to Meet the Beatles the way it was intended to be listened to. Then I’ll play that other Beatles album – I forget which one it is, but it’s the one with “Penny Lane” and “Rain” on it.

  5. Mr. Moderator

    I was being serious, not sarcastic, Rick. I know it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with singles. In fact, they can be the foundation of great albums. Even if they don’t get to that part, no problem. For as much as I cut on iPods and mp3s, I think it’s great how they’ve opened up the listening capabilities for people.

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