Why commercial music needs a talking-to.
November 13th, 2008 at 12.28pm (Album reviews, Misc)
I am a music enthusiast; I think this much is evident. I study music at school. I have a 27GB iTunes folder, which is steadily climbing. I buy CDs and vinyl records, I regularly read books about music and musicians (not limited to a specific genre, either), I write a blog about music, and — here’s the kicker — I appreciate the album.
The album. A fairly recent invention, when you think about it. Recording began with one or two songs, and singles were all the rage for quite a few decades, although some very early albums were actually a collection of 78s packaged together (the first being Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite in 1909) like a photo album, hence the name.
When Columbia produced the first 33⅓ LP in 1948 (more info), this took on the name “album” from the previous collection of 78s, since it held about the same amount of music. From there on, albums were produced that way — a collection of songs in a specified order on two sides of a disc.
Fun facts: The first double album was Benny Goodman’s Live at Carnegie Hall (the concert of 1938 released in 1950), and the first triple album was probably George Harrison’s solo debut All Things Must Pass (1971) — certainly the first triple by a solo artist, rather than an ensemble or group.
Anyway, for a while singles were popular and the thing to collect; then it was LPs, with the singles coming out beforehand to promote the record and to be played on the radio. This began the idea of having a few singles on the record, ones you’d hear on the radio, as well as other songs you would only hear by buying the album — a good way to encourage buying albums as opposed to singles, since the album incorporated both.
(Of course, the single would also include the B-side, which was the new track, demo, or otherwise unreleased song that would accompany the A-side single … it’s a whole thing that I won’t get into in this post, but let’s just say that was encouragement enough for collectors and enthusiasts.)
In recent years, there were cassette singles, and then CD singles. Nowadays there are very few bands or labels who release a physical copy of a single; it goes out to the radio stations as a promo CD, but the general public will probably get an iTunes download or some form of MP3 from the Internet. The digital age has taken over.
Which brings me to the issue of the day (that took long enough): the digital age. The age of the single song, and the decline of the album.
You wouldn’t think this is a problem, coming from circles anywhere but “commercial” pop music. Albums are more than alive, with vinyl making a huge comeback; all kinds of artists are releasing their records on both vinyl and CD, with a digital download of the record accompanying the vinyl copy for those who want to put them on their iPods or so on. You can’t go wrong with this idea; for the same price, you get a great package and vinyl copy, as well as a completely legal MP3 copy for whatever you want to use it for. The digital age is certainly doing some things right.
However.
I like to read the Writer’s Prompts on LiveJournal sometimes. Each day they put up a question that writers can answer if they want, and I tend to read a lot of the responses to see what people are thinking. One question recently said, essentially, “What are your top ten favourite albums?”
Albums, not songs or artists; albums, the complete package. Here’s my favourite response (these are all treated as anonymous):
I truthfully can not answer this question [...]. I do not own any complete albums.
Not a single one. Not even a greatest hits record? There are people out there, ladies and gentlemen, who do not own a single full album. I can’t even comprehend this, but so it is.
Why does this happen? Why would people ignore the idea of the album, the concept of a package of songs put together for a reason and with a purpose?
The answer, as so many things seem to be these days, is commercial music marketing.
As an independent music fans, we like to blame everything on The Man. Big labels are marketing bad artists. Everything in commercial music is overproduced. There’s nothing original about the mainstream. Whether or not these claims are founded, there is still one problem about commercial music: it is stuck in single-land. Everything is about the one or two or maybe even three songs that will be played hundreds of times a week on the radio, the ones that everyone will see and hear and know really well before the album even hits the shelves. The rest of the album is filler.
Instead of conceiving an album as a whole, it is seen by much of the commercial music industry as just a collection of songs, some of which are good, and others that are throwaway tracks. This is totally different from the view of the independent music industry, where often the single (because it is more commercial and supposed to be radio-ready) is the throwaway track and the deep cuts are the best stuff. Interesting.
Here’s another response to the prompt that accentuates this idea: I don’t think I have ever seen (or heard) an album on which I liked every single song or even most of the songs, so for me, albums are usually a disappointment.
I don’t have a great all-revealing point or conclusion to bring to this idea, but I think that a lot of it speaks for itself. Why is the album no longer important, and why are artists producing, or being made to produce, so many filler tracks? It used to be that being signed or distributed by a major label (Universal, EMI, Sony, Warner) was the biggest and best thing that could happen. Now the “new major labels” are highly-regarded independent ones, like Matador (Pavement, AC Newman, Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, Lou Reed).
There’s quite a lot of debate possible here, of course. Perhaps it’s not entirely due to commercial marketing campaigns. The digital age really does promote the single song; if you hear something on the radio, you can just download that one song, whether illegally or from Amazon or iTunes, and never see nor hear the rest of the record. Some people have no idea what the album cover even looks like for many of the songs that they listen to for this exact reason. Unfortunately, it seems infinitely more prevalent in commercial-land than it does in indie circles; the trend with independents is “returning to your roots,” or kicking back to the days of LPs and 45s, buying full albums, getting the artwork, and listening to things as a whole.
If you are in disagreement at the end of this post, and you still do not like albums because most of the ones you’ve heard, like the speaker in the second example, are disappointing, here is a short and by no means complete list of some of the albums that I own that are “dingers” — in other words, where I do not feel the need to skip a single song. Maybe you’ll find them to your liking. I can only hope you do.
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (1959)
Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Further Out (1961)
Paul & Linda McCartney – Ram (1971)
The Jam – All Mod Cons (1978)
Joel Plaskett – In Need of Medical Attention (1999)
David Braid Sextet – The David Braid Sextet (2001)
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane – At Carnegie Hall (2005; rec 1957)
The Flashing Lights – Sweet Release (2005)
Jetplanes of Abraham – Jetplanes of Abraham (2006)
Field Music – Tones of Town (2007)
Elliott Brood – Mountain Meadows (2008)
Gareth said,
November 13, 2008 at 6.35pm
For the record, cassette singles should always be referred to as the “cassingle.”
But I agree with you 100%. I am often guilty of just buying the tracks I want as opposed to the whole album. Whether the blame for this issue lies solely with people like (or worse than) me is questionable, because it is rare that any album is in fact worth the $20 that HMV (or Borders here in the States) wants you to fork over for it.
I will, however, stipulate that the albums on your list are indeed worth the $20. At least, the ones that I’ve heard/own, like Kind of Blue and Monk & Coltrane At Carnegie Hall. I don’t know about Time Further Out, I’ve never heard it, but Time Out is also worth the money. Maybe I’ll come back here later if I have time to make a list of my own.
cinchel said,
November 13, 2008 at 8.49pm
first…MODERN WORLD is THE JAM album…but..this is actually an argument me and a few other brit pop fans argue about a lot.
but i think the vinly with mp3 download is the best idea ever. i hope all labels go to that or if they go only download it will be flac only. i am not paying money for crippled shitty sounding mp3’s (and no 320kbps is not going to cut it..)
i do worry about the album..it has been on the decline in the main stream for over the decade …but i think the indies and the music lovers that support them are still in favor of the LP format.
lets keep our fingers crossed…and keep buying those lp’s
jamie said,
November 14, 2008 at 6.03am
I truthfully can not answer this question [...]. I do not own any complete albums.
oh my god, ruhee, i couldn’t read past this point. that is a such a TRAGEDY.
Eric Ambler said,
November 16, 2008 at 9.50pm
This is an impressive and thorough deconstruction of the divergent motives that drive the marketing of mainstream and independent music, and it is an argument that I am wont to agree with completely. Nevertheless, I wonder how you think the legal issues of the major labels over the past six or seven years alters the perspective that the mainstream music industry is content to remain “stuck in single-land.” The four biggest labels just escaped a digital music price-fixing scandal which, for me, recalled the 2002 class-action suit in which these corporations were convicted for colluding to artificially inflate the price of CDs. Perhaps the focus on the quick and easy distribution of singles in the digital marketplace is better for the mainstream consumer in the long run, as well as a safeguard against the sometimes questionable ethics of the major record labels.
On the other hand, your point about what constitutes a “throwaway track”–and how many of them should be reasonably expected on a full album–is well taken. The discontinuity between Billboard’s top singles and albums charts illustrates the failure of commercially-oriented artists to conceive of the album as an organic whole. Contrasting this to your take on the independent music scene, “where often the single (because it is more commercial and supposed to be radio-ready) is the throwaway track and the deep cuts are the best stuff,” I am little confused as to whether you consider “throwaway” to mean a song that is wholly unmemorable or simply an arbitrarily small piece of a more satisfying whole found on the complete record. Indeed, independent artists might not have their singles prominently featured on a radio playlist, and thus count on the buzz generated by a song’s circulation on music blogs or MySpace to spark interest in their albums. Though your post posits many good reasons why the music industry should not stake its financial and creative fortunes entirely on the production of good, catchy singles, I believe that the format is too integral to the expansion and continual reinvention of the business to be totally discarded.
Ruh said,
November 16, 2008 at 10.54pm
So many comments! Sorry to leave you guys in the lurch for so long.
Gareth, I’d like to comment on this:
Whether the blame for this issue lies solely with people like (or worse than) me is questionable, because it is rare that any album is in fact worth the $20 that HMV (or Borders here in the States) wants you to fork over for it.
Is it that rare? I find that most of the albums that I buy these days were well worth the entire record (at least the last five albums that I bought were worth it start to finish, and I can willingly furnish you with that list if you would like it). However, most of the albums that I buy are usually less than $20, because I often buy them at shows or smaller record stores. I guess I am just really used to the sort of indie culture that is inescapable in Toronto.
I guess I’m interested to see what albums you’re buying and why they aren’t worth it (not that I’m questioning your judgment! I have certainly experienced the disappointment of spending $20 on a record that was really not as good as the one or two songs I knew, and this still happens to me a decent amount).
Jason, I think the album will stick around longer than we expect it to (after all, didn’t people say the Internet signaled the end of print books?), but certainly we will have to put in a lot of effort in order to keep it that way. As long as there are a lot of artists committed to making albums as one good solid art piece, we will be fine — and there are a lot of those out there right now (as evidenced by the difficulty I have each year in making my year-end top albums list).
Oh, and I wasn’t saying that All Mod Cons was or was not the best Jam album … just that it is one of the records that I listen to all the way through, because I don’t feel like there is a single song I want to skip!
Oh man, Jamie … I know. I know.
Ruh said,
November 16, 2008 at 11.04pm
Thanks for posting, Eric, and for linking me on your blog post as well! I appreciate the thought and consideration you’ve put into this response. I hope I can do some of your questions justice.
I think you’re right about retail of single songs helping escape the “questionable ethics” of the major labels. It is certainly a lot harder to rip people off that way because songs are set at a fixed price and remaining competitive seems to take a lot more effort (especially because shopping around doesn’t take a lot out of the consumer; instead of having to go to four different CD stores and pick the best price, which most people wouldn’t do, they can just go to four different online retailers like iTunes and see which one is the cheapest, all without leaving their chair). I certainly think that would be a propelling factor in single-buying. Couple that with the ability to buy as few or as many songs as you want, without being restricted to “the album,” and people these days are probably pretty excited.
I wonder, though, what sort of impact this will have on artists later. If people aren’t buying the other tracks from albums as much, how will things get discovered, you know?
With respect to the “throwaway” track, I was referring in part to the “indie” culture’s tendency to regard anything commercially-minded as a sellout. Singles are marketed for radio (ie. mass media) and so a lot of people who belong to this subculture will automatically classify the single as the track that everyone will like, so if they like that song the best from the album they are boring and mainstream. I do know a few people who hate it when the song they end up liking the best is the single because they feel “unoriginal”. It’s probably inappropriate for me to comment on what I think of that personally, but certainly that idea influences what people think of the single.
I don’t think that the production of good and catchy singles should be discarded by any means — I think it’s an excellent idea, especially in marketing terms. Most bands do want that one song that breaks through and makes people go “This is really awesome, I should check out more stuff by this band”. I just think that the album should be a little more important in terms of the super-commercial, mainstream, big-business music companies. It might restore a few people’s faith, or at least make some people hate the big labels a little less, because there would be a larger proportion of decent stuff coming out of the mainstream market, and some more cohesive and interesting art work.
Gareth said,
November 16, 2008 at 11.26pm
Well, Ruhee, to be perfectly honest, my opinion on the value of whole albums has come more from borrowing them from the library rather than buying them. I bought three albums last year while I was here in California, and I haven’t listened to them much since I bought them. That might just be how I listen to music, though (obsessive phases.) But of the hundreds of albums I’ve borrowed from the library over the last year or two, precious few of them (I would say between 10 and 20) would be worth $20. A lot of them have a couple good tracks, two or three listenable tracks, and the rest just feels like filler.
Ruh said,
November 17, 2008 at 2.02pm
Gareth: I definitely don’t think one’s opinion on the value of albums would be different if they were borrowed rather than bought, and I certainly understand where you’re coming from — I just meant that perhaps different genres or styles or cultures of music would perhaps be more inclined to look at the album as one cohesive whole, and spend more time on making it listenable all the way through. That’s why I said I was curious about what albums you were buying or borrowing, since maybe that is the case.
barbara said,
November 17, 2008 at 10.42pm
You’re preaching to the choir here. Sure I sometimes feel a trifle disappointed when I buy an album and end up liking only one song, but that’s the risk you take sometimes. And some of my favourite cuts are ones that I have only discovered after multiple listens.
Gareth said,
November 17, 2008 at 11.11pm
Ruhee, that’s a great point. A lot of the albums I borrow are definitely constructed around particular songs, which makes sense because the reason I borrow them is often because I’ve heard the songs on the radio. I do always hope for the album that is a whole statement, rather than a collection of musical ideas. It seems, however, that that concept isn’t particularly lucrative in the popular marketplace and has been discarded by studios and the “heavy hitters” of commercial music. Which is sad, I suppose. However, I know there are some albums out there like that (a cohesive whole) in the commercial music scene and they are my favorites (John Mayer’s Continuum comes to mind.) I suppose it would take a large initiative on behalf of the artist to declare a vision for a project. Then again, I wonder how many people just bought or downloaded “Waiting for the World to Change” and ignored the rest?
Eric Ambler said,
November 18, 2008 at 10.14pm
Thanks for the response, Ruhee; such lively and thoughtful discourse on this topic is often staggeringly difficult to find on the Internet.
As someone who gets bothered when he’s interrupted whilst listening to an album top-to-bottom (my preferred way to listen to music nowadays), I’m also worried about the future of the album as a format even though I appreciate how the digital marketplace has truly democratized distribution. I think Gareth has comprehensively summarized the reasons for album-buying anxiety, so I won’t recount them here, but I will add my voice to the chorus pleading for greater attention to “albumcraft.”
But I must confess that in my heart of hearts I can’t muster much antipathy for the major labels in this situation, at least as far as assigning the blame, maybe because much of pop music is better suited to the singles-driven business model. Perhaps I am painting too broad a picture, but I’m just never going to care about the overall quality of a new Rihanna album as long as it delivers one or two insidiously catchy tunes. If she or her songwriters can’t or won’t put the same effort into the rest of the album, well, the label’s going to make money anyway. C’est la guerre, as they say.
What intrigues me the most is that the album was pushed heavily by the labels for the biggest rock/pop acts of roughly thirty years ago, before the convenience of the cassette/CD/digital single. It was even embedded in the marketing language of the day–some mainstream radio formats were entirely dedicated to “album-oriented rock,” whatever that meant. And there’s the rub. Your Billy Joels and your Eagles were essentially cobbling together albums that revolved around a handful of radio-oriented singles, something that feels no different to me than what a major pop act like, say, Kanye West is doing in the present.
I’ll acknowledge that the metaphor doesn’t quite hold for the pop tarts and the flashes-in-the-pan, but I think a lot of what makes a cohesive album is the effort that the artist puts into the endeavor and not so much what the label may or may not demand. I guess the main problem is that the financial rewards for lazy songwriting can be great, and without question the labels are major enablers in this process. But clearly there are people out there who appreciate the experience of listening to a well-made album, and these are the types who will seek it everywhere. Great LPs are a lot like baseball diamonds: If you build it, they will come.