silentkid wrote:I've had a lot of discussions with my good music buddies about this very topic. I'm of the opinion that the age of the album is nearing an end. This is difficult for me, because I'm an album guy. I like to listen to entire albums and shy away from "Greatest Hits" or "Singles" compilations. But, the increased popularity of iTunes and other digital media outlets and the ability to choose which individual songs you'd like to purchase is slowly pushing the album concept out the door. It's like we're going back to the time when artists released singles (45s) every few months. The focus was on the single and not on the later compilation of the singles and a few additional songs to fill out an album. I'll miss the concept album: no more Thick as a Brick or Dark Side of the Moon. I have lots of thoughts on this.
It took a lot of convincing for us to decide that we weren’t going to pursue the album avenue (at least not right now). The concept album is indeed something that is missing from the world (other than The Flaming Lips keeping it alive… and maybe the Eels… oh, and Bright Eyes).
I think the hardest thing was for us to sit down and decide what songs to record, and what songs to simply play live. Maybe one day we’ll get an album together. It’s sad to say that one of the driving forces behind the digital decision is cost effectiveness. There’s a lot of recording time that needs to be recouped already, and the ability to market/sell CDs just doesn’t seem feasible. Even Radiohead decided to only offer their new album via download (although you can buy the special album that comes with all the goodies).
Maybe the day will return when the album cover/art was just as much a work of art as the actual album, and the story told through the progression of the songs/music will be as important as the songs in and of themselves… and hopefully vinyl will make a comeback (which might actually be the medium we go with if we ever do release an album).
The days when you were supposed to listen to the whole CD was probably destroyed the day they invented “shuffle.”
*sigh*
by the way,
If you’re ever in Vegas and feel like hanging out with a heathen Mormon, lemme know.