When will the album format in prog go away?

What Gerinski said.

In mainstream pop, albums are just collections of songs, and it makes sense to purchase the songs individually.  In prog, such albums exist, too, but more typical is the concept album which is a whole work, and while some of the parts of such albums may be viable as single songs, most are not, and buying them individually makes as much sense as buying a single symphony movement.

Hi,

Edited by moshkito - January 30 2015 at 12:10

When pigs fly. (The real ones, not the inflatable PF pig floating over the generator station on the Animals album cover!)

Eventually, prog music will be replaced by algorithms and programs, and we will be able to "participate" in the music in many ways, including adding vocals/instrumentals, manipulating time signatures etc.  New technologies that track hand and body motion will be incorporated into the listening experience. 

moshkito wrote: Hi,   Weird .... now we can't have Symphonies anymore, because the idiot wants songs, and the symphony has 4 movements ... and you will not bother listening to the 3 movements in the middle of the piece!   Very weird!   No sense whatsoever, about music and its history!  And the money and popularity of pop music is what is hurting music definitions and its history! No wonder most folks do not consider progressive or anything having to do with pop muisc, music at all!!!!!

Good post. It is weird, and kind of depressing. With the younger generation wanting everything quicker and quicker, man, that lack of patience is detrimental to the real appreciation of the arts. Come to think of it, I don't know many people that just take an hour or hour and a half, or even two, and just listen to music. I do, and wouldn't give it up for the world. 

This kind of thing is the very reason why ipods and streaming became popular in the first place.  People got tired of buying a whole album because of a good song they heard on the radio only to discover that it is the only good song on the album.  Thus the biz turned back more towards the format of singles.  It is a sad commentary on popular music that most artists really only have a couple of good songs in them.  The business model is to hit, hit hard, and milk it for as long as possible.  The music itself seems almost the last thing in mind.  Prog fans, however, tend to take a more serious approach to their musical listening and thus maintain higher standards than most (there are exceptions of course), and one of the signs of progressive rock is the cohesive album;  More than a collection of random songs, they are pieces of music built around certain ideas.  They do not have to offer a concept album, only one that is conceived of as a whole.  Aristotle's basic model of beginning, middle, and end, is a good plan to work from.  It seems that conscious effort has been put into how an album will begin and how it will end, and how the music will move from one to the other in a cohesive way.  The best albums give us an experience of something more than a series of songs.  When Pink Floyd released The Division Bell, I found I enjoyed the songs better when heard in context of the rest of the album rather than individually on the radio.

I disagree with every point made in the OP. But that's a personal opinion.

The album format will never go away, vinyl, CD, DVD, and digital file are the currently used formats by most of us... 


Edited by Slartibartfast - January 30 2015 at 21:18

I don't think the album format will disapear completley for a while yet... or perhaps never, who knows. However, the new format gives more liberty to the artists. If they only have one song and want to release it, why bother to make a whole album? If they have a whole album worth of music, then they may release it so. I guess for the time being, the album format will continue to be influenced by the CD limitations, thus making the albums single albums or double albums or whatever, but there might come the time when the artist chooses to release his music only through internet and make an album with 90 or 100 minutes, and not call it a double album (why bother?). Also, I think there could be some interesting things to be done. I remember reading once about how the Foundation series from Isaac Asimov was released, and he released a chapter every certain time on the news... and it had the readers crazy for the next chapter to come out. Perhaps a very good and powerful concept album could be released this way through internet, and then have the lyrics, and perhaps some extra writing to tight up the concept, and some visual art added in a file, and release one song with the bunch of goodies every month. Perhaps they could even create an interactive site for the project (I could imagine Rhapsody of Fire having released their albums in a way similar to this). Of course, it would be best if said band actually got a really good writer of stories to suport such a thing.

It's 2015 and already I have seen a few reviews of new albums. Though people have been saying that the album format has been dying for years it certainly hasn't become extinct. Not at all.