Good Riddance To Albums

One of my fondest memories as a kid was saving up my money and making trip to the record store where I would spend what seemed like hours going through the LP bins. Finally I would narrow down my selection to what money I had in my pocket. Sometimes I would be able to get only one album, maybe two or on those rare occasions when there was a sale going on I’d get more. I can still remember the very first album that I bought was YesSongs by Yes which was followed a couple weeks later by a purchase of Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Even though the 45 singles market was the most popular way to get the current hits albums were the my personal preference and over the years amassed quite the collection; especially of specialty coloured vinyl pressings. Sure albums where more expensive but at that time the quality of the music being produced generally meant the the majority of the album would be stuff that you liked. In the majority of cases there might one or two songs on the album that you might not like so the price we paid seemed to be a fair exchange.

As the years passed and vinyl changed to cassettes which then changed to CDs that fair exchange of money for quality music began to shift. Eventually it got to the point that you were lucky if there were two or three songs on that CD that you just paid $20.00 bucks for were any good. During this time along comes the Internet and ways to convert those CDs into single files that could be played on any computer. People began to discover that no longer were they having to buy a whole CD to have only the good songs from it. They also found ways to be able to share all those songs with people around the world.

It didn’t matter if it was legal or not to a great many of these people because they felt; right or wrong, that the record companies had been stealing from them for years. After all weren’t the musicians themselves saying that they made next to no money from CD sales – it was their record  companies who were really making all the money. Into this fray then came Apple and their iTunes  store with the radical idea of selling single songs for .99¢ and in short order it became almost the defacto standard for buying legal music on the Internet.

Music distribution had changed and for a change the people had the ability to buy exactly what they wanted for a fair prices without being forced to pay extra for garbage tracks. The album concept was slowing losing ground and once more the single track; the modern day equivalent of the 45, was the most popular way of buying your music.

For some musicians though this isn’t what they wanted and while some quite justly felt it ruined the musical experience they were trying to provide throughout the CD as a whole for others it was all about the money. Or is really the musicians that are concerned about this in the end after all aren’t they ones trying to tell us all that they don’t make any money from CD sales.

While some big bands have shown that it is still possible to produce quality CDs that is meant to be listened to as a whole and  that people will buy them the majority of musicians still only produce one or two good songs per CD. It is case like this where in my opinion the album CD concept is just a con job from the record companies to make us spend more money for less quality. This is why some record companies are pulling songs from iTunes under the pretense of artistic merit so that they can return to the album CD model and the larger dollar figures they make from it.

Unfortunately thought those same record companies risk further damaging both theirs and the artists incomes by forcing this issue the way they are. The single track genie is out of the bottle and there is no way that it is going to go back in. People are getting use to being the ones finally in control of how they buy and listen to their music and the simple fact is that they aren’t going to pay for  garbage tunes anymore. If the record companies push hard for a return to the album CD with only one, two or maybe three songs worth paying for people will give them the middle finger and return to the P2P networks in droves.

Using the argument that artists deserved to be paid for their work is partially correct. What is correct is that the artist – not the record label – is the one who deserves the lion’s share of the income. That comes with a caveat though – they only deserve the money if the product is worth what you are being charging for it.

At one time the album model worked giving you the best value for your money but that is no longer true in the vast majority of cases. As with the 45 the single tracks today is the customers best value and if the musicians want to make more money then start producing better music and less garbage.

The day of the album is gone unless the musician provides enough value for the fan so that they are willing to pay for an album format. If not the single track is what we will be buying for a very long time to come. It’s up to the musician.

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