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Date Posted: 18:09:04 03/01/05 Tue
Author: By KILL FRANCISCO
Subject: Death of the music album

Death of the album
By KILL FRANCISCO


Downloading, from which I’m sure most everyone under 20 is guilty of, is often called the death of the music industry with regards to the record labels and publishing companies. For those not in the know, a record label is basically the company that pays for recording time in the studios, manufactures the album, promotes it through the media and sells it to retailers. Publishing houses though are the companies that handle the music itself and the lyrics and they’re basically the ones in charge of getting royalty payments from entities that use the music that they own and make sure that the artists and songwriters which assigned the songs to them gets paid what’s due them. In other words, these are the companies that deliver the songs to our auditory senses.


From my viewpoint though, the downloading biz is just another temporary stumbling block for businessmen. I don’t see the death of both record labels and publishing houses happening anytime soon since both of them can always adjust their business to the ever-changing market out there and believe me, they have started adapting. These music companies are basically the reason why file-sharing sites like Kazaa and Napster have slowly shifted their operations from illegal downloading to legal as sanctioned by the US courts. Also, these music companies have started selling their music to videogames so wonder no more why the most recent games you play on your playstation 2 or xbox have killer background music aside from the realistic sound effects. Yet another way that these music companies have gone around is through your mobile phone. Yes, it’s also the music companies who make available on your dinky hi-tech mobile those ringtones and wallpapers that make your phone sound and look so cool.

Consumers often don’t really care if these music companies go belly up from loss of sales and some even like to think that they’re sticking it up the record labels’ arses when they download songs and such but what they don’t really know is that they’ve killed something more, they’ve killed the album.

When I was a kid growing up, my familia would go to the mall and spend some time there going around, eating and listening to music. I so thoroughly enjoyed making my mom and dad buy me records like Pink Floyd’s the Wall or New Order’s Substance. These records were just such a joy to listen to that everyone I know who bought them just had to listen to the entirety of the whole album. You can probably call these albums theme albums and they were such a rage before. Remember Led Zeppelin’s IV? Michael Jackson’s Thriller? The soundtrack of Star Wars? Vivaldi’s the Four Seasons? These are all albums that would just grab the listener and make him spend the entire afternoon just rolling a doobie and listening to the entirety of the album. Those were the days.

These days, it’s all about the single. When you buy an album, you should deem yourself lucky if there are more than two good singles off it. The age of the single has come and all you need to do is take a look around and listen to it with your own ears. When people download songs from the Net, they don’t download the album, they just get the single that they hear on the radio or on the telly. When mobile phone users get a new ringtone, they don’t get the album, they just get familiar portions of the song called snippets. I remember when music soundtracks had a theme song and you could hear subtle variations on this one theme all throughout the album. Now, all you get are catchy singles thrown together to make a compilation.

An album, which is basically a representation of a certain part of the artist’s life at the moment of its writing and such, shows the different sides, the moods and character of the artist himself. Those days are gone now with the advent of the single and downloading. Most people these days don’t really appreciate the artist anymore and just would rather concentrate on songs and singles. Of course, there are exceptions which would be the reason why fan clubs are still in existence but majority of the world’s population don’t really care who sang the song. They care more for the song itself which would also explain the popularity of cover songs or revivals.

Another culprit on the side though that no one really wants to blame is technology. Computer hardware and the compact disc manufacturers are partly guilty for killing the album. Back in the day, when you bought a cassette, you’d have to listen to the whole album since it was such a pain to have to rewind and fast forward the tape and it takes quite a bit of time too for us impatient beings. When compact discs became commercially available, the days of rewinding and fast-forwarding disappeared since CDs can directly skip to the songs you want to hear. Computer manufacturers on the other hand made the necessary hardware commercially available to download singles and make compilations from them. Burned compilations are actually everywhere these days. Mind you, I’m not against compilations but a CD full of music these days represents more of the CD owner’s taste rather than one artist’s singing and songwriting capabilities.

Now what happens? Who got hurt? Well, no one really got hurt except for the album. Record labels would always adapt and find ways to make money. Artists would still get paid advances and royalties for their singles. Music though would be different. Before, singles that came off albums were part of that album and as such was part of something bigger. It actually inspired songwriters to write dozens of songs about their lives and was sheer poetry. Now… if you’ve noticed, artists just write singles. I’ve heard quite often songwriters say, "if only I could write that killer single" and I guess that’s all that they’re waiting for which brings to mind the movie "About a Boy" which starred Hugh Grant. In that movie, Hugh Grant’s character lives off the royalties from a single his father penned and I guess that’s every songwriter’s fantasy now. The album is dead and downloading has killed it.

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