Re: Falling (Death of an Album)

["Peter T. Chattaway" <petert at interchange_ubc.ca>]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Nathan Swartzendruber wrote:
> When you can download single songs, what happens to the bigger picture
> of the album? People short-change themselves and limit the artist's
> Voice when an album is sliced apart, the argument seems to go. Wondering
> what you all think of this.

"Albums" are a fairly recent innovation.  People sold only singles in the
early days of recorded music, and what albums there were, were generally
regarded as collections of singles.  I don't think people really began to
seriously think of "albums" as entities unto themselves until, say, the
mid-1960s (probably around the time of the Beatles' _Sgt. Pepper_).

So the "album" is not an integral or essential part of pop music, but I'm
sure it will continue in some form or other.

> IMHO, if this is a valid argument, it's very late in coming. With the
> advent of MP3s and P2P, single songs are what most people went for
> because full albums were much more difficult to find. People grabbed
> what they could find and then listened, or didn't listen, later.

Or, as Courtney Love pointed out, people turned to mp3s because they knew
that albums often have just one or two good songs, and the rest of the
stuff is filler crap.  If record companies really *need* to put out entire
"albums", then the popularity of mp3s will hopefully encourage them to
make sure that every album that exists *deserves* to be an "album".

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
Nothing tells memories from ordinary moments; only afterwards do they
   claim remembrance, on account of their scars. -- Chris Marker, La Jetee

---------------
Unsubscribe by going to http://www.actwin.com/OtR/