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.

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, 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.

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.

oh my god, ruhee, i couldn’t read past this point. that is a such a TRAGEDY.

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