If Music Could Talk

matedog wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 6:34pm

I think the album format is dying and singles are on the way back. Streaming makes the album format a lot less relevant.

That's what I thought when iTunes was launched. Being able to buy just the songs you wanted, not the whole album with who knows how much filler, would lead to a revival of the older, pre-Beatles & Dylan model of albums being mostly collections of singles, that the single was the key medium for popular music.

Except for the artists that are releasing all these visual albums.

Kory wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 8:07pm

Except for the artists that are releasing all these visual albums.

Que?

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 8:34pm

Kory wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 8:07pm

Except for the artists that are releasing all these visual albums.

Que?

Or video albums I guess I should have said. Beyonce, Sampha...I'm sure there's others.

matedog wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 6:34pm

I think the album format is dying and singles are on the way back. Streaming makes the album format a lot less relevant.

True

Kory wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 9:20pm

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 8:34pm

Kory wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 8:07pm

Except for the artists that are releasing all these visual albums.

Que?

Or video albums I guess I should have said. Beyonce, Sampha...I'm sure there's others.

I know a few from the old days—The The's Infected immediately comes to mind—but I'm ignorant of anything contemporary (and that last bit obviously applies to more than video albums).

Kory wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 9:20pm

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 8:34pm

Kory wrote: ↑

18 Jan 2018, 8:07pm

Except for the artists that are releasing all these visual albums.

Que?

Or video albums I guess I should have said. Beyonce, Sampha...I'm sure there's others.

Sure. The album format will never fully die off. There's too much merit to it. But I see it falling off substantially since listeners will have an option when before they didn't.

Is the so-called “vinyl revolution” just a fad then, with its inherent implication that, among other things, people have a yearning for the old school physical product which, obviously, is largely album based?

Low Down Low wrote: ↑

19 Jan 2018, 11:46am

Is the so-called “vinyl revolution” just a fad then, with its inherent implication that, among other things, people have a yearning for the old school physical product which, obviously, is largely album based?

Certainly not speaking for everyone who's rediscovered vinyl, but I do think that it's largely a status statement. It's declaring a passion for music that's above the usual music consumer. If streaming and downloads make music easier, vinyl makes it harder. It's more work to play, more work to store. And it's tangible where digital is not. Arguments about warmer sound and all that might be valid—I can rarely tell the difference, but that's fully on me—but it is, again, an argument about separating oneself from the less discerning, less demanding listener. Larger sleeves (actual sleeves, compared to digital) justify a claim that art and liner notes mean more. It doesn't (necessarily) make one a snob, but it does signal a separation from the hoi polloi.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

19 Jan 2018, 11:56am

Low Down Low wrote: ↑

19 Jan 2018, 11:46am

Is the so-called “vinyl revolution” just a fad then, with its inherent implication that, among other things, people have a yearning for the old school physical product which, obviously, is largely album based?

Certainly not speaking for everyone who's rediscovered vinyl, but I do think that it's largely a status statement. It's declaring a passion for music that's above the usual music consumer. If streaming and downloads make music easier, vinyl makes it harder. It's more work to play, more work to store. And it's tangible where digital is not. Arguments about warmer sound and all that might be valid—I can rarely tell the difference, but that's fully on me—but it is, again, an argument about separating oneself from the less discerning, less demanding listener. Larger sleeves (actual sleeves, compared to digital) justify a claim that art and liner notes mean more. It doesn't (necessarily) make one a snob, but it does signal a separation from the hoi polloi.

I don't think the "album" is ever going away because it's still an artistic statement, but obviously the way it is consumed has changed. That said, I don't believe the album will ever be what it was in regards to sales. The entire industry used to be built around album sales and those days are gone.

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

19 Jan 2018, 12:26pm

I don't think the "album" is ever going away because it's still an artistic statement, but obviously the way it is consumed has changed. That said, I don't believe the album will ever be what it was in regards to sales. The entire industry used to be built around album sales and those days are gone.

Originally, the LP connoted serious music. LPs were for jazz and classical music. The 45 (or 78) was for pop and then rock n roll and all that unserious music that kids bought. Once a rock n roller like Elvis put out enough successful singles, they'd be bundled up as an LP, to generate some extra cash and, for consumers, a convenient way of hearing lots of Elvis without having to constantly change the record after each song. It was Dylan and the Beatles who, in making rock music respectable and serious, made the LP the standard in the genre. Indeed, by the late 60s, the distinction between pop music like the Monkees and rock like the Beatles could be tied to the format. Serious rock artists could only be appreciated via albums, and singles were an afterthought.

But what was conceived as a means of signalling status—serious and unserious—was soon enough hijacked by the record industry, which saw more money to be made in LPs. LP sales were more lucrative than singles, which were basically ads for the album. Things became even more dire once the cd wholly eclipsed vinyl and releasing singles on cd were less profitable (hence the scam of multiple versions of a single, making the Real Fan shell out over and over). So you got the situation of a pop artist whose normal medium, the single, was no longer viable; they became album artists. And fans who only wanted that one good song but had to spend $20 on a cd that was mostly filler got pissed. When Napster and BitTorrent and legal downloads arrived, it was a means of restoring the old balance of unserious pop singles and serious music albums.

So, yeah, you're right that there's a tension between art and commerce. The virtue of downloading and streaming is that it frees consumers to make the distinction between serious and unserious and purchase accordingly.

What about the cassette revival?

Kory wrote: ↑

19 Jan 2018, 1:27pm

What about the cassette revival?

Is there one? That's got to be pure hipster retro cooler-than-thou-ism. Lesser fidelity, inconvenient for finding the song you want, its sole virtue was portability, which digital players already handle.

There's a minor one. Thurston Moore claims he doesn't listen to anything besides cassette.

I have a few cassette reissues for novelty, and a fairly nice Technics cassette player I picked up for a few bucks that I play a few cassette-only releases I've picked up over the years (I have a great Taang! records sampler cassette from the late 80s that's as good a collection of music as you'll ever find, imho).

I have a Halloween music cassette from when I was a kid that includes versions of songs I can't find digitally anywhere.

Addendum: arranging mp3s or Spotify setlits has none of the joy or creativity of genuinely sitting down and recording a mixtape. That's really what I miss about that dead format.

Flex wrote: ↑

19 Jan 2018, 2:08pm

Addendum: arranging mp3s or Spotify setlits has none of the joy or creativity of genuinely sitting down and recording a mixtape. That's really what I miss about that dead format.

The challenge of being limited by time, whether on a cassette or cd-r, was one thing, but, yeah, the genuine labour of dropping the needle and hitting record, listening along, then hitting pause and search for the next song. There's nothing objectively superior about doing it that way, but it's certainly more romantic.