When will the album format in prog go away? |
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paganinio
Forum Senior Member Joined: November 07 2008 Status: Offline Points: 1327 |
Topic: When will the album format in prog go away? Posted: January 30 2015 at 06:11 |
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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? |
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rdtprog
Special Collaborator Heavy, RPI, Symph, JR/F Canterbury Teams Joined: April 04 2009 Location: Mtl, QC Status: Offline Points: 5126 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 06:20 | |
With I tunes and the Progressive Rock bands that made album, you can't buy only individual songs because they make you buy the whole album to get long songs that are most of times the best ones. I agree that with the digital age, the album is loosing some grounds, but there is still some albums by Prog bands that contains plenty of good songs to justify the purchase of the whole album.
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Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
Emile M. Cioran |
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer Joined: February 10 2010 Location: Barcelona Spain Status: Offline Points: 5090 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 06:56 | |
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.
And it's quite silly to think of a band releasing separately their "good songs" and their "bad songs" in a conscious way. Even if they are aware that some of their songs are stronger than others, albums are then the way to sell the "bad songs", if you want the good ones, take the bad ones along. Often it's not that they are bad, it's that the band wants you to know also a different facet of what they want to do besides what they are most known or appreciated for (e.g. ELP's Benny The Bouncer).
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The Son of Gorp
Forum Senior Member Joined: December 25 2014 Location: Kyrgyzstan Status: Offline Points: 146 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 07:07 | |
Hopefully never. What will happen to the concept album? That's a fundamental part of progressive rock! I'd rather deal with crappy songs in exchange for more concept albums.
What would come in replacement? Concept songs? So, just songs, basically. And those have strong and weak moments too, so that wouldn't really remove the problem.
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When Da Zeuhl Wortz Mekanik, you just know.
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Stool Man
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 30 2007 Location: Anti-Cool (anag Status: Offline Points: 2689 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 08:17 | |
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. |
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rotten hound of the burnie crew
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Guldbamsen
Special Collaborator Retired Admin Joined: January 22 2009 Location: Magic Theatre Status: Offline Points: 23098 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 08:22 | |
I don't think this will happen - at least not in my lifetime - and least of all in the world of music that wants to be art - like prog and jazz fx.
The whole notion of bands only releasing their 'best' songs is crazy. Sometimes the band's favourites don't exactly allign with their fans' |
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ginodi
Forum Groupie Joined: September 13 2011 Location: Pennsylvania Status: Offline Points: 62 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 08:46 | |
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.
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altaeria
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 05 2004 Location: Philadelphia Status: Offline Points: 178 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 08:47 | |
Obviously, older existing albums will continue to be recognized as albums... and younger PROG bands may keep the "album" concept around for a little while, mostly because that type of collective presentation seems to fit the genre... but after another generation passes, along with the gradual takeover of streaming services, it wouldn't be far-fetched to expect songs to just be released individually or in small clusters. 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. |
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer Joined: February 10 2010 Location: Barcelona Spain Status: Offline Points: 5090 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 08:51 | |
Goddamm you might well be right but I hope that doesn't happen in my lifetime.
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addictedtoprog
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 16 2014 Location: india Status: Offline Points: 1422 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 08:59 | |
Bands releasing their gud songs separately- i dont see this happening.
Opinion regarding best song/songs from an album may vary even among the band members. And how often we see fans split along their favourites from an album. We as fans almost always tend to listen to specific songs from an album more than other not-so-gud songs. But even those favorites keep changing. |
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Walton Street
Forum Senior Member Joined: November 24 2014 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 872 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 08:59 | |
same here I hate the direction things are going ..makes me feel sick inside. thank god I hoarded enough music, books, and movies to last me my lifetime.
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"I know one thing: that I know nothing"
- SpongeBob Socrates |
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TeleStrat
Forum Senior Member Joined: December 27 2014 Location: Norwalk, CA Status: Offline Points: 9319 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 09:19 | |
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. In other styles of music like Pop, Country, Classical and Jazz LPs were still common. As much as I (and others here) don't like it, I believe long playing albums will fade away sooner than we think. Money is the bottom line in every part of our society and labels are in business to make a profit. They will produce and distribute what sells and they will discontinue whatever format is no longer popular.
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Walton Street
Forum Senior Member Joined: November 24 2014 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 872 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 09:26 | |
we did that as kids because we only wanted the hits and they were cheaper to buy. I remember loving those k-tel albums and wondering why anyone would buy an entire album by the same band - how boring that would be .. but then we grew up. and while we were doing that our older siblings or parents were buying the full albums. there's a different dynamic now and it has to do with a different youth culture than we've seen before .. they mass consume and then discard things at an alarming rate .. this is a generation who will buy a video game for $70, play it as fast as they can then dump it to get the next one .. and this mentality is being applied across the board. it's soulless .. i don't mind change if it's positive, i don't fight it unless it feels wrong..
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"I know one thing: that I know nothing"
- SpongeBob Socrates |
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octopus-4
Special Collaborator RIO/Avant/Zeuhl,Neo & Post/Math Teams Joined: October 31 2006 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 13344 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 09:29 | |
Yes, now I remember a sort of paper binder like a harmonium....I think my mother had one. Sadly, at a certain point she threw all the discs in the bin, to "clean up". A lot of music of the 50s and 60s has gone lost forever... Well, as long as the tracks are numbered, I don't care whether the support is a CD or something else. It's still an album for me. And I've seen more than one artist, including the last Pink Floyd, naming the disk "sides" as it was a vinyl. Not only, vinyls are now back to the stores. I've also seen a reprint of Garybaldi. It was so unexpected that I have shot it a photo. I would never download a single song from an album, even if it has only one valid track out of 10.
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Curiosity killed a cat, Schroedinger only half.
My poor home recorded stuff at https://yellingxoanon.bandcamp.com |
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twalsh
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 26 2014 Location: Vancouver, BC Status: Offline Points: 328 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 09:35 | |
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.
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More heavy prog, please!
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Angelo
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: May 07 2006 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 13239 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 09:45 | |
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.
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TeleStrat
Forum Senior Member Joined: December 27 2014 Location: Norwalk, CA Status: Offline Points: 9319 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 09:57 | |
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.
The 45s of the fifties eventually gave way to the LPs of the sixties. Maybe that was because bands started making albums with four or five hits (Beatles, Hendrix, Doors) that were getting air play instead of one hit. But with ipods and internet downloads the trend is, as I said, circling back to individual songs being the popular way to go. If complete albums fall from grace the labels will stop making them. I have a Metallica CD with only four songs (Beyond Magnetic). Will that format become the thing of the future?
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Stool Man
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 30 2007 Location: Anti-Cool (anag Status: Offline Points: 2689 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 09:57 | |
I can't imagine any band only releasing their best songs.
Firstly because most bands only have a small number of such songs (think of a band, think of their best songs, imagine if they'd never released any except those songs) and secondly because in many cases band members will not agree on which songs are best. The Beatles' White Album is a great example of this. Only half the songs have all four Beatles appearing, and selecting the final tracklisting for the album took a while, as each member would individually reaarange the order of songs, removing some and adding others, over and over. If they were only going to release the best songs recorded for that album, we might only have half a dozen instead of thirty. Now apply that to any future band who can't agree on which songs are the best. Also, what happens to sleeve art, and what are ya gonna roll Camberwell Carrots on? Edited by Stool Man - January 30 2015 at 10:00 |
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rotten hound of the burnie crew
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TeleStrat
Forum Senior Member Joined: December 27 2014 Location: Norwalk, CA Status: Offline Points: 9319 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 10:03 | |
That is interesting. I wonder how long the new wave of vinyl popularity is going to last. None of my children are the least bit interested in inheriting my vinyl collection. When my grandchildren get a little older, they probably won't be either.
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*frinspar*
Forum Senior Member Joined: May 27 2008 Location: Arizona Status: Offline Points: 463 |
Posted: January 30 2015 at 10:11 | |
Billy Corgan did this after the Zeitgeist album. He released a song or two every few months. Eventually he collected them on a series of limited edition albums. Smashing Pumpkins is my wife's favorite band and she picked up the LP box sets.
I thought the concept was pretty neat. I don't see why it shouldn't be done sometimes. If it serves the song or band better to release individually, I'm fine with it. If they want to do a concept album, they can. If they want to do a full album as has always been done, well that's perfectly reasonable to continue doing. But the idea simply allows some of them more flexibility to be creative and explore and experiment. I don't see the negative here. One simple example that springs to mind, Dream Theater could have done that with A Change of Seasons, without the additional cover medleys which, while somewhat entertaining, always felt tagged on to me precisely because everyone felt that it had to be an album with multiple tracks or the universe might implode. I don't think I've even listened to anything but the title track for at least 15 years. |
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