Death to the Album?
Warner Bros. records has released a statement that may just be the death of music the way we know it presently, or the way commercial music is known presently, or the way music execs think music is known presently because in actuallity its something different from that entirely. You may know that the album format has not been paying off as of late for the big four record labels. Artists release modertatly well recieved pop singles, the consumers races to their P2P network and gobbles them down, never really paying much mind to the rest of the album, which probably sucks anyway. I choose to blame that on MP3 Bloggers, its part of my self loathing personality. (see: sarcasm)
And alas it is 2005, the P2P battle is nearly a decade old and finally some of the big wigs are starting to realize you don’t want to lash out against the people who feed you, the consumers. So what is the answer to all this well, Warner seems to think it is in an E-Label:
Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of Warner Music Group, announced a new “e-label” his company is planning to launch that would sign new and niche artists and release their music only online. Artists who don’t have mass market appeal could release small groups of songs every few months and Warner Music Group will avoid the large cost of producing an album-length CD, he said.
Could this be the end of the album as we know it? Is the Album already dead? What will happen to the 70’s genre of music Album Rock, will it be forever be looked upon as a relic, a topic of bad sci-fi movies with Indiana Jones-esque archeologists squabbling over The Bands 1969 self titled album as if it was a lost holy grail? Probably not but recent quotes from some of my favorite artists state they see the whole creation process around an album is just a big bummer. Such as this zinger from Thom Yorke:
“When you’re finishing a record, you have to confront the idea of what it’s called, and there’s no getting away from the fact that people are gonna be reacting in such a way.” Yorke continued, “I think next I’d love to just do EPs ‘cos I’ve had enough of this whole album thing and that sort of level of pressure and scrutiny and the way that it works in the music business.
And that quote was from way back in 2003! See Thom you can rattle the suits cages, if you stick to what you know.
All in all this could be both liberating for the listener and the artist, Wilco certainly isn’t goin to stop putting out albums strewn with a cohesive thread through out, and record companies can get back to doing what they do best, collecting our dollars.