‘Straining to shore up the album’
p2pnet.net news:- One of the reasons we stopped buying discs of various kinds was because $20 or so for something with only two or three decent tracks was too much.
Well, “buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1,” says The New York Times.
“Because of this shift in listener preferences – a trend reflected everywhere from blogs posting select MP3s to reviews of singles in Rolling Stone – record labels are coming to grips with the loss of the album as their main product and chief moneymaker.”
And that’s forcing the labels to re-examine, “everything from their marketing practices to their contracts,” says the story.
But that doesn’t mean they’re about to give up on bloats.
Big Music is, “straining to shore up the album as long as possible, in part by prodding listeners who buy one song to purchase the rest of a collection”.
Will it work?
“I think the album is going to die,” the story has Aram Sinnreich, managing partner at a media consulting firm saying. “Consumers are listening to play lists,” or mixes of single songs from an assortment of different artists.
And, “While music labels labor to build careers for artists that are suited for albums, “You have to create an almost hysterical pace to find hits to sell as digital downloads and ring tones that everybody’s going to want,” the NT has Ron Shapiro, an artist manager and former president of Atlantic Records, declaring, adding:
“It’s scary.”
Also See:
The New York Times – The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor, March 26, 2007
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March 26th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
While music labels labor to build careers for artists that are suited for albums…
Actually that is not what they are doing. It is what they used to do. During the cutbacks, the artists suffered the hits on cut back as well. The labels dropped over 50% of their stable of artists, keeping only those that were best sellers.
At the same time they dropped the grooming of artists for the long haul. Citing the expense as too much. Instead their great idea was to cherrypick from the smaller labels the best of the upcoming best. They want the smaller labels to bear the cost of grooming the artist and then come along to reap the benefits after the the small label has invested all the money. Is it any wonder the smaller labels are reluctant to invest more into the artist that can be snatched out from under them?
As a result, you no longer have top ten hits that remain in the charts for any time. It has in effect shortened the cycle that a hit single remains in the charts. The majority of the fans feel no connection to the artist as they did before. Plus the back catalog is showing that neglect as well. Now when a hit single drops out of sight, it is quite literally gone. No one wants to hear the latest top hit 5 years from now. There is no staying power to the hit.
Is it any wonder that finances are tightening?
All hail the dinosaurs last days!
March 26th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
the album you bought was made up of ALL GOOD songs????? That era is GONE!!!!!!
THAT is why ppl are going for singles. The TOTALLY GOOD album was killed off by Big Music’s greed and now they wonder why ppl want singles. Big music’s greed (nefariously) told them that an album with one or two ‘decent’ songs on it with the rest of the songs being trash was good bu$ine$$…now they’re finding out that their greed LIED!!!! and they’re trying not to drown in their own Greedy PI$$…….
March 26th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
When was that? I must have blinked.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:23 am
60’s, 70’s – see Pink Floyd’s Dark side of the Moon, Rolling Stones Hot Rocks, and many many more
March 27th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
actually it goes much further back than that. Anyone here old enough to remember 78s made out of celluloid?