Another Soundscan report is in and once again, album sales in the United States have slipped, this time from 235 million to 227 million compared to the same period last year. This is actually nothing new, since the format has been in a major decline since 2000, when sales were at an all-time high of 785 million.
Just to be clear, 227 million of anything is still a lot of units, and it should be noted that these are only the sales that can be counted. With so much of an artist’s income coming through DIY methods these days, there are millions of CD and vinyl sales made on artist websites and at gigs that go unreported.
That said, its clear that the trend in music is away from the album format, even when its digital, as streaming becomes the norm for music consumption everywhere. It wasn’t always that way, though, as there was a lot of reasons why the big 10 inch caught on in the first place.
A Case For Albums
One of the things that albums in vinyl record form required of the listener was an increased attention span longer than what was needed for a single, at least for the length of one side of the record, or about 20 to 25 minutes. This time limit was imposed by the limitations of the vinyl itself, as a longer running time would result in increased noise and a lower output because of the shallower grooves that were required in order to fit them into the same vinyl area.
The one thing this did do, however, was divide the album into an easily consumable block of time, one that was long enough to get a sense of what the artist was trying to say. It was also a way of discovering songs that appealed to the public ear on a level that might not have been anticipated by either the artist or the record label. So many of the classic hits we’ve come to know and love through the years fall into this category, like Marvin Gaye’s version of “Heard It Through The Grapevine,” Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” and Eric Clapton’s (actually Derek and the Dominos) “Layla,” just to name a few. Plus, the artist was able to make a statement with the album as a whole, as evidenced by big hits like The Beatles Sgt. Pepper, Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, and Greenday’s American Idiot.
A Case For Singles
One of the reasons that the album has fallen in popularity has to do with the fact that, unlike the vinyl record, the CD didn’t have the time restraint of around 50 minutes total (most vinyl records proved to be somewhat less than that), which led to longer albums as a result. Although it might seem that more music for the same price would be perceived as a bargain by consumers, most music lovers didn’t see it that way, instead finding many of the tunes on a typical CD to be nothing more than filler, and therefore a waste of increasingly precious time.
Both artists and record labels share responsibility for this. Seeing that there was more time available on a CD, the natural tendency was to fill it, usually with material that would ordinarily be rejected back in the days of vinyl. Where vinyl record albums usually contained around eight songs (give or take one), a CD album normally contains at least ten, which has become the accepted standard today. Of course, digital albums have an almost unlimited playing time, depending on the format, which might be good for archiving but doesn’t do much as a sales feature, and fewer and fewer consumers are interested in the format even with the additional content available.
For an album to really work, you have to have an artist that thinks in terms of multiple songs and how they fit together, or at least writes the songs in compressed period to where a listener can get to better more insightful look into the artist’s soul during the period. Imagine a time when the label demanded two albums per year from an artist like back in the bad old 1960s, yet some of the most enduring music ever made came from the period. Given the musical trends of today, few artists are able to work under those conditions anymore.
Back To The Future
The fact of the matter is that the music industry has returned to its roots. The business was originally based around the single (of course, a single consisted of two songs because of the two sides of the record), and an album was never guaranteed unless an artist proved himself worthy with multiple hits. Back in those days, the album wasn’t necessarily a cash cow that it eventually became, so the labels were discreet about which of their artists would be granted the opportunity. The consumer heard the song on the radio and hopefully ran out to purchase the single so she could play it any time she wanted to at home.
Today we have a similar situation with a couple of twists. First of all, music consumers were already conditioned to the single song mentality when downloads became widely available through iTunes. Why pay for the songs that you didn’t like? You only had so much money to spend on music, so it was necessary to choose only the tunes you really loved. This set the stage for the streaming paradigm shift of today.
Now we’re back to the days of the single, where the listener only wants to cherry pick the songs he’d like to hear through an on-demand service like Spotify, Rdio or Google GOOGL -2.09% Play Music, and to a lesser extent a non-interactive service like Pandora or iTunes Radio. Sure, you can still listen to the entire album if you really love every song, but that’s happening less and less. Albums won’t become totally obsolete like the buggy whip, typewriter, movie film or video cassette, but they become less needed and wanted every day.
Unfortunately most of today’s artists still aren’t hip to the fact that they’d be much better off just releasing better singles more often, rather than waiting to compile 10 mostly ordinary songs and release an album. With a single release, it gives the audience a chance to really give it a thorough listen, rather than skipping over songs on an album that aren’t familiar or they don’t get at first. We now live in a singles world, and music consumers are fond of reminding us of that fact every day.
