http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/j ... extinction

Any wonder? You've got a stupidly risk averse industry that was overrun by amateurs and hardware experts years ago, and that continues today with the likes of Amazon and Beats. But the truth is your average album hasn't been worth listening to for decades!

IMO this is both good and bad.

It's good in that it will force artists to carefully consider what they record and release. Lets face it there are very few albums that are consistently good from the first to the last track. Less songs, but of a higher quality can only be a good thing.

However there are two problems that I can see. First it makes music only about instant gratification. Those tracks that take more than a couple of listens to appreciate aren't going to get a chance anymore. I know that a lot of the songs I liked on a album when I first heard it aren't the ones that I still like now. Playlists allow listeners to be complacent and safe. It's like the people I knew back in the 70s who had never listened to the B-sides of their vinyl singles!

Secondly there is the problem of relying on others to provide your listening content. At least with my vinyl and CDs I can listen to the music I have for as long as the medium and players still function. Using a streaming service you are entirely dependent on the company providing the service. One of the big changes that is coming is that as time passes copyright on many recordings is reverting from the record companies to the artists themselves. Right now artists don't earn a lot from streaming and unless that changes I can see some big names pulling their content.

Imagine one day waking up to find your playlists decimated (in the original sense of the word) because Spotify et al no longer had the rights to stream all the tracks you wanted to listen to?

In the end it's just another turn in the cycle. Until the mid 60s it was all about the individual songs. The along came the album and right now we seem to be heading back to individual songs again. At some point the album will be back, when the time is right for it.

+1 to all that!

At the moment controlling the money from your own gigs seems to be the way.

I don't use Spotify so wouldn't be affected if they went down. There have been a few albums out in the last few years where I have liked very track.

Another thought...

My band has been releasing songs on EPs - 3 over the last 3 years. However the one question we get asked most often by fans and reviewers is when we are going to release a full length LP?

Guess for those who still take an active interest in music the album is far from dead.

I have always been a big fan of the EP.
Don't get me wrong, I have a ton of albums both vinyl and digital, but for some reason the EP has always remained this sort of elusive thing that not enough bands seem to produce.
Maybe it's just the bands I like and listen to often that aren't producing them and the market as a whole has healthy EP sales. I don't know.

I do know that I don't actually like buying singles anymore.
I never really liked them as a format other than for promoting the album as well as presenting some interesting material on the B-side (always listen to the B-side!).

Albums started losing their cachet with the release of the CD.
The album always had the larger artwork/liner notes going for it, but the CD did away with that simply because of the size of the packaging.
There has been some inventive design to work around that but on the whole they were pretty much one-off attempts.
Also, don't forget about the 12" picture discs, or even the cut-to-shape discs, something which the CD and download files can't really produce.

As a viable format, the album may well be headed to the grave, but I think there's a long way to go yet, and as someone said, it may just be in a downward dip in the cycle of formats at the moment.

I can say that since I stopped buying vinyl I have started consuming music differently.
I would, in the past, play an entire record from track one, side one all the way through (both sides).
Since iTunes though I always have my library set to random shuffle by song (this is mirrored on my iPod too), so I absolutely never play an album all the way through except immediately after purchase.
So in terms of supporting the argument that the album format is dead, I guess I do that pretty well.
I don't use playlists though, and the only ones I have are ones that people have created for me or ones that I have created for them. I never actually select them and listen to them.

What writing this post has told me is that I guess I have more of a fondness for the 12" piece of vinyl than I do for the actual album format.
As long as my favourite artists keep on producing albums, I'll keep on buying them.
If a new artist (to me) releases a song I'll always look for the album, if there isn't one it'll be a case of either doing without or just getting the single, but I think it's a lazy way to make music - just releasing a single with nothing for it to promote other than itself.


Mark

It's also worth mentioning in various ways you can now 'test' the album tracks - that'll kill filler stone dead. Even hardcore music fans with that level of easy access will just think 'Christ, why even check any more?'.

Clearly the manufactured pop music side of the industry has very much moved away from it, but I don't think pop was ever really after the album market at all. I think in genres like rock, and any where the musician actually wants to mentally engage with the listener that the album still has a lot of life left. I still buy them on a regular basis, and if the widespread availability means that an artist cannot add filler tracks but has to keep their game high throughout the album that can only be a good think in my book.

Actually as far as the print music press is concerned the album is still very much alive.

This week, we've had our first really good national print review because they considered our (5 track) maxi-EP as a mini-album. Our previous 3-track EPs had been completely ignored by the national magazines.

That means, at the moment if you want to gain recognition and exposure as a band in the national print media, you have far more chance if you are releasing an album rather than individual tracks.