The Death of the Album may be Nigh

For some years now, music label executives have been crying foul about file-sharing networks and the lost revenue represented by every song downloaded for free rather than purchased at the CD store. The battle to recoup losses has been complex, ranging from the blunt yet feeble attempts to shut the networks down, through to the more innovative attempts to embrace, rather than reject, new technologies (e.g. the pay-per-song approach of Apple iTunes, Digirama and the newly launched CokeTunes).

At 35, I’m sandwiched between fond teenage memories of buying vinyl records and trekking around second-hand music stores, whilst also embracing the great many advantages of digital music, such as MP3 players and finally locating obscure gems or discontinued artists via file-sharing networks. From this perspective, living in both ‘contexts’, I can see that much is being lost through the new digital profile that increasingly represents the music industry. There is a threat, which if it eventuates, will be as much to do with music label marketers’ attempts to rescue their industry as the file-sharing networks themselves.

What the file-sharing networks have in common with pay-models such as iTunes is the potential for the format known as the full-length album, or CD, to become obsolete. This is because full-length CDs are increasingly being ignored as the cult of the single hits full steam - type in any artist you know well into a file-sharing network such as Limewire or Kazaa, and you’ll inevitably see that most of the non-singles or less popular tracks are missing. Only the most popular tracks feature, as with the pay-per-song services which heavily promote singles over albums. As a result consumers are becoming conditioned to just buying and listening to singles, a situation exacerbated when they create their own ‘pick and mix’ playlists for their iPods and MP3 players. The days of following artists album-by-album, and collecting actual, physical representations of them (i.e. records and CDs) are numbered.

Is this a bad thing? Well, think again about whoever you most enjoy listening to and you’ll undoubtedly realise that you like much more than just the singles. For that matter, many of the world’s most popular songs were never even released as singles (e.g. The Eagles’ Hotel California or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody). In addition, it has to be realised that most musicians of critical note do not set about to write ‘hit singles’ - they write for many personal reasons about many personal things. Usually it’s the music label’s execs that identify the singles to be promoted, especially when it means allocating video-production budget.

As music labels post ever-decreasing profits, and see their income increasingly being derived from sales-per-downloaded-song (not per album), then the inevitable direction to take will be the abolition of the CD. This will be a simple decision to make, as it will eliminate the need to support artists as they make non-single music with its low ROI, as well as most of the costly production and distribution expenses. All that will be needed will be the promotion, leaving the distribution to the user-pays internet, and restricting artists’ studio time and expenses to pre-approved single-production only.

As consumers continue to listen to their own personalised playlists, labels will be encouraged to promote their music via genre or occasion rather than artist. EMI have been particularly successful at this with their Lazy Sunday series, and ‘various-artists’ CDs are increasingly being created for occasions rather than the artists themselves. One triple-CD set I have labels the CDs “At the Bar” “In the Club” and “Chilled at Home”. CDs such as these are compiled and bought for their uniformity, and the artists’ names and subtler moments are lost in the mix.

Granted they can give new artists good exposure before a CD is produced, but what argument can be made for CDs at all within this environment? Music labels will have every incentive within this emerging context to only pay and promote artists song-by-song, rather than investing in an expensive, long term contract. Interestingly, this was precisely the model that worked so well for Motown, giving us Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Jacksons and Gladys Knight - perhaps not such a bad thing?

Jonathan Dodd