The music album - does it still have its place?

[H20nly]

Ultimately it comes down to humans needing ways to organize things. I don't see anything wrong or less artistic about singles or standalone pieces. The preference for albums seems to me a conditioning from cultural experience and consumption of media.

agreed.

if you think back to the early days of records... you got 1 song on a side.
fast forward to more advanced techniques... i.e. tighter groves... and wow two songs!
now you have 33s with all those songs on there! it's twice as amazing! we should fill it up with even more songs!

[Tarekith]

But performed music vastly pre-dates recorded music, and no one went to concert to see one song. Surely records being one song only early on was a limitation of the times, not intention?

[TomViolenz]

But performed music vastly pre-dates recorded music, and no one went to concert to see one song. Surely records being one song only early on was a limitation of the times, not intention?

This

[slatepipe]

my listening experience when i was young was records and cassettes. albums and 7" singles. i would pretty much always listen to an album the whole way through, rarely skipping tracks. if it was an album i'd recently bought i would listen to it 2 or 3 times in a sitting.

as cd's started to come on the scene then i gradually started to skip tracks and listened to less full albums. i guess the advent of remote controls helped that along too. it was easier to skip cd tracks when you're flat on your back on the floor. though the first cd i ever bought was bongwater's double bummer, which was a 120+ minute mammoth listening experience, i can still remember listening to that all the way through, often.

nowadays i tend to have the laptop plugged into the amp and big screen on the wall with the record player cued up with some vinyl out too. i still occasionally like to hear an album all the way through - depends on how lazy i'm feeling but sometimes i'll just play it all on youtube (those full album HD uploads that people put up) even if i've already got it on vinyl so i don't have to get up off my arse and flip it over after side one.

depends on my mood i guess, sometimes i tell myself - only vinyl tonight, then i get totally into the record playing procedure, and sit there and watch it go round and round

the other week i listened to two longstanding favourites - dead kennedys fresh fruit for rotting vegetables and nomeansno's wrong. the latter is a particularly good vinyl experience as i find that by the time it's teared through side one i'm almost breathless with excitement and can't wait to turn it over

[H20nly]

^ nice.

But performed music vastly pre-dates recorded music, and no one went to concert to see one song. Surely records being one song only early on was a limitation of the times, not intention?

This

for sure.

BUT... squeezing an album worth of material on them just wasn't gonna happen at first... that took decades. and bands probably didn't like coming on stage to play one song unless it was on some show where that was the standard... like Ed Sullivan etc etc.

so the notion of "more of my/our material" can fit on the record was probably a very exciting feeling. who would have wanted to record a single if they had an option to put out an album?

i think this business of releasing a single here and a single there is in direct correlation to the fact that the artist(s) releasing that single can pull it off without leaving a home studio.

by contrast, in say... the 1950's, having a record company press your single was awesome enough... but if/when they wanted to record an album I'm sure there weren't too many arguing about how long and arduous and too musicy that would be.

[Tarekith]

i think this business of releasing a single here and a single there is in direct correlation to the fact that the artist(s) releasing that single can pull it off without leaving a home studio.

by contrast, in say... the 1950's, having a record company press your single was awesome enough... but if/when they wanted to record an album I'm sure there weren't too many arguing about how long and arduous and too musicy that would be.

I can see that, it's cerainly a lot more costly to record an album. More than anything though, I think the singles issue these days is just due to people having shorter attention spans myself. People don't do anything for very long these days.

[H20nly]

^ most definitely...

have you seen Get on Up, the movie about James Brown?

i watched it last week and really enjoyed it. there's a scene where he's trying to convince the record company to let him record his live album... they're like "HELL NO. Do you have any idea how much that will cost?". as we know from the album, he ends up getting it done... he was one determined feller.

[Tarekith]

Haven't seen that yet, but it's on the list for sure, thanks.

[H20nly]

i watched it in Oakland... it got a standing ovation.

[stringtapper]

And then this was on NPR yesterday:

Your Favorite Songs Abridged

Last Friday, a Top 40 radio station in Calgary, Alberta, introduced listeners to a new format. As one on-air stinger put it, "90.3 AMP: Now twice the music."

When they say "twice the music," though, they actually mean half the song. That is, this station plays songs that have been heavily edited: long opening riffs, instrumental breaks, even a chorus or two might disappear. The goal, the station's representatives say, is to keep listeners from getting bored.

[Angstrom]

Back when I worked with VMG / EMI most of their "singles" profits were coming from ringtones. A single candidate had to be reduce-able to a 7 second blipvert.

That was thousands of internet years ago, of course. Now the kids all snort raw file headers out of ironically retro themed file containers. " Gimme some of that dark hex out of a .swf , daddio". They say.

[H20nly]

and make it snappy! only a total square can't separate the .pcl from the driver.

[TomViolenz]

Wow
I'm so square, I don't even have an idea what any of this means

[Tarekith]

I think a swfr is a mop?

[sporkles]

I've been pondering this question a lot over the years; for the last 10 years or so, I've always been working on several tracks interchangeably, with the goal of achieving a unified sonic expression and a bunch of tracks that work on their own and as a part of a larger whole. As a part of this mindset, I've also been reluctant to share stuff because I've wanted to present this "whole" - not just fragments of it. Now, I don't have delusions of grandeur or anything, but I've been considering a plan where the "album" would comprise both the full experience (all the tracks, mixed) and the individual tracks isolated in a DJ-friendly manner. The tracks would of course also be available only as individual downloads. I've always been very fond of music that tells a story, so I think this would be a great compromise.