The Death of the Album

[Lord Lav]

Here's an article I wrote about the death of the album. I dunno what you guys all think about albums vs singles these days?

 

[Fade]

Interesting question for sure. I don't think albums are dead, of course not, but I think that artists need to release albums as an album, not a collection of singles. That's the biggest thing I've seen over the past while - it's just singles smashed together, that's why you see artists say, "I have a bit of everything on here for everyone". Because it's not really an album at all.

An album should be a concept, or an entire set of music that the artist recorded within a certain amount of time. I believe they should lock themselves in the studio for 2 weeks and boom - that's the album. If they were to stop all the singles releases and "mixtapes", then they'd end up with something special.

Just releasing singles will backfire because the fans will be too quick to dismiss it. Everyone today has short attention spans to begin with, so releasing singles just feeds that even more.

 

[Lord Lav]

Interesting points. From an artistic perspective albums are definitely important and they have huge value at least when they're done in a holistic fashion as you described. From a business perspective perhaps not so much at least for now. Part of the reason the concept album flourished in the 70's was because there was a strong market for it and it was financially profitable for all concerned. From a business perspective at least (not necessarily the most important thing), a drip method of releasing individual singles is probably a lot more profitable. That being said, there are still definitely people that really want the conceptual approach to creating an album. It's just they're a much more niche group than before.

Things tend to move in cycles. You'll probably find that the singles market will become saturated and thus create a bigger market for concept albums over singles and mixtapes once again.