When will the album format in prog go away?

The album format made sense when music was distributed on vinyl and compact discs. Now it's making less and less sense, with YouTube, iTunes Store, Internet download, and new technology I may not be aware of.

In the old days a song "Providence" is known as "that song from Red which is the song before 'Starless'".

In the future, this will all change.  I believe future prog songs will be known as individual songs, and not associated with the album it was first released on.

The song "Providence" will simply be known as the song "Providence". You don't have to buy "Starless" in order to buy "Providence". Why the hell not? Well, maybe the guy already owns "Starless" because it's just such a classic song. The guy will never need to buy extra unnecessary songs that he doesn't need. It's the year 2015 and it's about time this new model becomes the standard.

Artists will choose to release individual songs or full albums. Bands like Rush will benefit the most from these, because a lot of Rush albums are basically "one great song, two good songs and a bunch of songs nobody cares about".  (You may not necessarily agree that Rush are a good example, but you should get my point.)  In the future, Rush will not need to do that!  Rush can just release the good songs, as individual songs, on iTunes or some other vendor.  The consumers will be able to pay less to hear better songs.

How about the people who don't care about the audio Rush experience, but enjoy their live video footages?  Rush can also sell individual song videos on iTunes or some other vendor.  This is much more flexible than a DVD release. It's a waste to buy a DVD and only like a few of the songs.

This is what the future is gonna look like. Are you excited? When do you think this will happen? The technology has been around for at least ten years already but I've yet to see artists who embrace this new model. Why not?

What you say applies to Pop and more mainstream music, but I don't think it will apply to Prog in the short term. One of the characteristics which often apply to Prog albums is that they are conceived as albums, not as a collection of separate songs.

Originally, albums were actual albums like a book, with each page being the sleeve of a 78rpm record which could fit 3-4 minutes of music on each side.  I've only ever seen a couple of them at record fairs, they're a mostly forgotten format. 
The Long Player followed in the late 1940s, and just like any music format it will eventually cease to be a popular form of music.

But not yet, not for a very long time indeed.

Liking just songs is more for mainstream pop and the related genres. It has always been for me to judge a band by an entire album. One could pull a song, say..."The Carpet Crawlers" from "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," and perhaps call that definitive, but to do so lessens a part of the concept in that it all has to be experienced in one giant gulp. 

altaeria wrote: It almost makes more sense for a band to release 1 or 2 songs every few months  in order to sustain momentum and have something to tweet about on a consistent basis.

Gerinski wrote: altaeria wrote: It almost makes more sense for a band to release 1 or 2 songs every few months  in order to sustain momentum and have something to tweet about on a consistent basis.  Goddamm you might well be right but I hope that doesn't happen in my lifetime.

TeleStrat wrote: With the growing popularity of buying individual songs we're basically circling back to the 50s and early rock and roll. My older sisters were from that period and just about all they bought, along with most of their friends, were 45s. Portable record players were very popular back then and they couldn't play LPs because they were too big.

If electronic formats continue to take over the market, maybe there will be more of an "anything goes" ethos to recording releases.    45s, LPs, CDs have technological limits that largely determined the quantity of material released at one time. Today, maybe there is no reason that we don't have anything from five minute to two hour+ releases, as well as anything in between . This is not necessarily a bad thing, though it's been discussed recently here that most artists struggle beyond around an hour of material.   Pop may focus on singles, but I wouldn't worry about prog rushing to this.

I hear what you're saying Walton Street. We've been a "throw away" society since things like Pampers diapers and Bik lighters caught on.

Angelo wrote: Funny to read the opening post the day after reading an article that states that sales of individual tracks in 2014 are down 13% compared to 2013, in favour of streaming and sales of albums - the latter mainly due to the rise of vinyl sales. Seems the model is a bit more complicated than it seems at first. Let's see what happens, for the time being there are more than enough bands making albums, and releasing them. Not because of sales figures, but because they want to.