Is the musical #album, as a form of art, dying?
That's the impression I get when looking at the latest releases either on my Tidal account or my RSS feeds.
Between 80-90% of the new releases are singles. Or a single with one or more remixes attached.
Now that music is mostly streamed, and no longer constrained to a physical disc with limited capacity, and release cycles have been reduced to just uploading an mp3 to a music distributor, I feel like artists feel no longer compelled to make a new release every couple of years containing somewhere between 8-15 new songs.
They just put out a single, get feedback fast, iterate fast, and once they've released at least 8-9 songs in this way they may decide them to put them together into an album.
I definitely see the point from a business perspective. Getting "the feeling" of what the audience likes, thanks to tight release cycles of a couple of singles per year, is less risky than waiting a couple of years to put out a full album.
But is it better for music?
I may be old fashioned (and raised in the late golden age or the concept album), but I still enjoy sitting on my couch to enjoy for an hour or so the latest release by Tool, Tame Impala or Sigur Rós.
The album isn't just a collection of songs. It's often a coherent, well thought journey that, when properly thought, can be greater than the sum of its parts.
And I feel like all listeners have something to lose from the death of this format.
Fabio Manganiello /
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2023-08-26 15:05:45
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2023-08-26 15:05:45Event JSON
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