An interesting question is posed on the BBC 6Music site - are we witnessing the beginning of the end for music albums? Do you value your album collection? Are tracks better appreciated as part of an album or do you all use the shuffle function on your iPod or MP3 player. Many artists (e.g. Travis, Ash, Prince) are beginning to acknowledge that the downloading of tracks has fundamentally changed the way audiences listen to music and have decided to either do away with or give away albums.
2 comments:
This is interesting in terms of our understanding of what an 'album' is. The idea of a 'concept' album, a series of tracks that are unified by an overarching theme or story is probably an alien idea to younger musophiles. Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs from 1959, is arguably an early 'concept' album dealing as it does with conception of contemporary America (this is such a cool album). The sixties brought Pet Sounds (life inside the head of Brian Wilson) followed in the eighties by musical narratives such as The Wall by Pink Floyd. I’m sure there are later examples but I can't be bothered to look for them. Alternatively the general form an album takes is to assemble 3 or 4 tracks that will be released as singles and pad them out to produce a product that will appeal to the same audience that the single will appeal to, therefore maximising the return on the product. The unrelatedness of the tracks suggests that they can be viewed as substantive pieces, therefore eliminating the real need for the institution to 'group' them. This need to group the tracks is further diluted by the different types of access we know have to music. The record shop as repository for music has been replaced by the ‘server’. The customer can buy individual tracks rather than predetermined groupings. In terms of customer choice this kind of interaction between institution and customer suggests a more liberal and democratic relationship. However, the way the creative artist's work will also be changed as they will now, arguably, be more focused on the production of single tracks-in response to consumer demands- rather than the more artistically substantial effort required to produce a collection. Some might argue that this development is to be expected as music, like other media manifestations, reacts to societies demand for instant gratification and a quick, cheap thrill.
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