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Topic History of: The resurrection of the album
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Alex Day |
I should say though James that I love your writing and the depth to which you dive into the music industry week-on-week (including on the few occasions I graced the Top 40, to which I'm grateful for your interest and coverage). |
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Alex Day |
I like the observation but I think the conclusion is wrong: the reason people are listening to whole albums again, instead of cherrypicking the best songs, isn’t because they now care about the whole album but because people have become so surface-level they actually can’t tell the difference between a smash hit and an album track; all they care about is “is it on the album?”.
I think actually the big trend these days isn’t with albums but with ARTISTS; much like the movie business making endless sequels, remakes and spinoffs, people are embracing the familiar. The same way you read the same newspaper or watch new seasons of the same TV shows, the internet gives enough musical diversity with different niches and genres that everyone can find exactly the music they like, so people already have the artists they need and just want the same people releasing new things for them, rather than being excited by new faces.
Of course you still need hits to make it work; which is why Adele’s album (with Hello as the lead track) sold twenty million copies last year, but Ed Sheeran’s new one has only sold about two million (with less strong ‘copycat’ hits) and Bruno Mars' new one (with no hits) hasn’t even shifted one million yet (it was outsold - proving my genre theory - by a new album from Metallica). So the track (or the HIT to be more precise) is still the key. |
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JK2006 |
A fascinating post. |
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J Masterton |
So I have this theory that social media, along with the massive success of artists such as Ed Sheeran and Drake has done something extraordinary and resurrected the album as an artistic statement - just as everyone had assumed the Track was now the most important thing.
Details in the attached link.
www.masterton.co.uk/2017/05/how-they-rescued-the-album/ |
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