Ever since digital music reared its giant, fire-breathing behemoth head, music fans have been able to cherry pick the music they listen to and create playlist upon playlist to their hearts’ content. Gone were the days of carefully recording a mixtape cassette or burning a CD for a friend. Sharing your music list is as simple as copying a web link. With the ability to make playlists came the slow decline in album sales.
Discussions on the internet inevitably boil down to anecdotes about getting sick of paying for a whole album of music when you only want a couple of the tracks, but it’s always going to be more complicated than that. Singles are cheaper, and make more money, for starters.
Some news has been doing the rounds recently talking about just how bad music sales have gotten, but the biggest piece of news is how badly album sales in the US have become:
In 2014, not a single artist’s album has gone platinum. Not one has managed to cross that million sales mark.
[…]
In fact, album sales this year are so bad, you have to look all the way down to number four on the list of best-sellers to even find something that was released in 2014. […]”
The whole article from Forbes.com is pretty damning, and an eye opener for sure. I doubt any other country is doing any better.
So far this year, the only album to break the 1 million mark wasn’t even an artist album… or released this year! The soundtrack to Disney’s animated hit Frozen came out last year, has continued to be a massive hit well after cinema release, and has sold 3.2 million copies since it came out. And according to Forbes (and the data), it’s only when you get to number four do you actually have an album released in 2014…
Yet again, Billboard talks about vinyl sales being a “bright spot”.
[…]vinyl is up a whopping 47.5 percent to 6.074 million units from 4.12 million units last year. In fact, in the first nine-month period, vinyl album scans outpaced by 20,000 units all scans that the format had in all 12 months of last year, when vinyl sales totaled 6.054 million units. Jack White’s Lazaretto is the best-selling title so far this year, with scans of almost 73,000 units.
For me at least, the last artist album I really enjoyed from start to finish was Henry Saiz’s Reality Is For Those Who Are Not Strong Enough To Confront Their Dreams, and even then, there were a couple of tracks I didn’t care for. And before that, it’s been so long that I can’t even remember… But the whole point of the album has been about the artist’s vision (or hearing) being made available to the audience. You listen to their music in their chosen order, with their chosen tracklist. I’ve also personally bought more vinyl this year than the last five put together. Including the very weird LP of Aphex Twin’s latest, Syro.
But I think the reality is that the bulk of us don’t want that anymore. We want to be our own curators. We want to be our own DJs.
What was the last album you bought? Do you think they’re still relevant?
I don’t think it has anything to do with listeners cherry picking tunes… I think it has more to do with most artists not putting out “albums” anymore… just collections of songs. When was the last time you heard an album where all the tracks thematically blended together to paint a cohesive picture? It’s getting to be pretty rare.
This is precisely where I fall. I buy a lot of full CDs when I buy music, mainly because I stay in the underground and I know most of the money does go to the artist. But generally, if I get three actual songs out of a 10-12 track album it’s a good purchase. Most of the time I get three “clubby” songs, one “ballad” and a bunch of filler that is kind of a waste of time.
Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid, mAAd city” comes to mind but that’s about it recently.
the latest from Flying Lotus, Madlib, Atmosphere, Tricky, Run The Jewels, etc.. all have pretty coherent album themes and have been put out in the past year. Lots of artists still do it, and do it well.
I will def give you those few are coherent albums… but that is merely a drop in the bucket of what comes out these days, I still say on average it is pretty rare to see.
Agreed. (Good) LPs used to to tell a story – a continuation of a theme throughout the listening process. As Jared stated, bad albums had a couple of good tracks bolstered by a load of filler. It is a shame how this once great concept seems to be dying.. But there are always the millions of LPs already produced to go back and re listen to :)
From start to finish and it’s just a month old: http://store.dfarecords.com/products/dfa2448
It has to do with most people having no culture of anything, they listened to albums in the past because that was “the way to listen to music” now they mess with iTunes in the same way, just following the trend and they’ll embrace the next thing whatever it’ll be like nothing, without questioning anything, the only thing they need to know is that “everybody’s doing it” … the most of them don’t even like music, it’s just a social matter for them, they only whant to hear what it’s fashionable, in the places that are trendy, don’t care (never did) if it’s an album a single or bullshit
It’s true that most albums only have 1 or 2 good songs on them, with notable exceptions. But, to me, having signed with a label and produced an album is the minimum level of skill required for me to give a shit about your songs. If you haven’t been trying hard enough, and long enough for a label to like you, it’s unlikely that I will either.
My most recent vinyl purchase was http://www.metropolis-mailorder.com/product.php?prodnum=MET+948V
But I already owned it digitally. I wanted to buy it so I could have the record as a keepsake.
Regardless, I think we are all spread out now, listening in our own little worlds. By and large, I am not interested in what the media is peddling me. I get my music almost exclusively from my friends, and from people I respect. That’s it. There are no CD stores in my future, only Bandcamp. I’ll buy a vinyl record from an act I respect and want to support, but I’ll still only listen to the digital version, since it’s usually the same mix as the vinyl and comes with none of the inconvenience of the record player.
Music sales are changing because culture is changing. It’ll all come back together soon, and just be completely different.
i was never interested in CD stores i hope they close asap waste of space well my wish came trough actually, almost every CD shop is closed here but we still have good record shops.
The only albums I still buy are mix compilations such as John Digweed’s Live In series, the Balance series and really any Cattaneo compilation. In terms of dance music, mix compilations give me a much better idea of the artists vision since it conveys much more easily the feeling of a musical journey. I absolutely love Henry Saiz but even I enjoyed listening to his Balance mix much more than his artist album because of this.
In terms of other genres, especially hip hop, I can still see the value of albums but, as alkivar mentioned, there are few artists who actually put together albums that are rewarding when listened through start to finish. Kendrick Lamar’s Section 80 and Akir’s Legacy are two brilliant hip hop albums that are amazing to listen to beginning to end.
You should check out his Labyrinth podcasts.
https://soundcloud.com/henry-saiz/sets/henry-saiz-s-the-labyrinth
I have. Labyrinth 20 & a live show of his I attended are the main reasons I’ve fallen in love with his sound. His sound is just phenomenal.
I have always bought a vinyl, cassette, or cd single from artists I didn’t trust fully
I seriously think the last album I purchased was Burial’s “Untrue” on cd as well as vinyl, and that was in early 2008 that I purchased it.
I kind of miss that old job I had back then, because I had the honour of delivering my local record store’s orders in between all the other packages that were on my truck ^_^
There are still loads of great albums being released but the amount of great dance music albums has always been pretty small. Personally if an album is all killer, no filler I pick it up on CD, that way I can enjoy the CD audio quality whilst ripping the album or tracks I want to my phone and Itunes for DJing, otherwise I just cherry pick the tracks. Buying the CD is also a bit of future proofing for the days when memory is so cheap, all the digi DJs can start dropping WAVs..
A few cohesive, well structured albums I’ve enjoyed recently off the top of my head:
Burnt Friedman with Daniel Dodd-Ellis – Cease to Matter
Lonnie Holley – Just Before Music
Flying Lotus – You-re Dead
Electric Wire Hustle – Love Can Prevail
Homeboy Sandman – Hallways
Shabazz Palaces – Lese Majest