The End of Album-Length Releases?

There was a discussion on WNYC's "Soundcheck" show a few weeks ago about whether single song and EP releases are going to replace album-length releases. I am not sure that albums are completely dead, but the changing avenues of release, financial reality in the music biz, and the human attention span certainly will dictate more short releases.

The music business no longer has a near-monopoly on the ability to release songs or collections thereof to the public. Pretty much anyone with a computer and an internet connection can create music and make it available to the public. In such a case, there seems to be little justification for compiling a collection of a dozen or so songs before releasing them. In fact, it is easier and more reflective of the artist's state at any given time to just release them "as you go."

As for the financial aspect, it takes just about as much money to create a CD with a few songs on it, reproduce it in large numbers, and advertise and distribute it as it does to do so with an album-length CD. And you can charge more for the CD with more songs (since you are including more product per package), which helps to offset the expenses involved. This is probably why albums are favored by record companies. This business model no longer holds as much water. The growing use of downloads over CDs means that the financial justification for album-length releases has largely been nullified.

Just as newspaper and magazine articles are too long to keep the attention of today's Twittering mentality, albums are too long for many of those same people. The idea of a concept album that requires someone to apply attention over the span of many minutes flies in the face of the contemporary one-unpuncuated-uncapitalized-nongrammatical-phrase-at-a-time state of mind and general communication.

So, yeah, I suspect that the album will be going away more and more for a while. But life tends to be like a pendulum, so things may change and we may see the return of the album someday. This sort of change has happened before.

As I will discuss more in a future post, I have been working to put together a side band project based on rockabilly and surf music. Those who know me already realize that this means a great deal of research on my part. I have been, of course, researching songs and artists, as is necessary, but I have also been researching the history behind the music, and this history includes a change like we are seeing now, but in reverse.

When rockabilly was at its peak (ca. 1954-1958), 45's were the medium of choice. A 45, for those of you who never have seen them, is a small record contains two songs, one on each side (SEE NOTE). The decline of rockabilly as a widely popular musical genre in America roughly coincides with the decline of 45s and the rise of albums in the 1960s.

Rather than stopping in a studio every couple of weeks or so to record something that was hot "now," bands worked longer to assemble a more comprehensive approach to releases. Instead of several 45s over the course of months, bands started releasing albums -- more songs, but less frequent releases. This stayed as the standard form of popular musical release for about 40 years. We are now seeing the pendulum swing back.

So while the fate of the album seems largely sealed, fans of that approach can take solace in the fact that these things can, and have, come around -- the pendulum does tend to swing back.

XXX

NOTE: For those of you who don't know, 45s were named for the speed at which they had to be rotated on a turntable for them to be in the right time-frame. Less than 45rpm meant a drop in pitch as the music was played below its recorded speed. Above 45 rpm, the recording would go up in pitch (think of The Chipmunks). Album's were intended to be played at 33 1/3 rpm. And there were even 78s. A form of amusement used to be to play a record at a rate different than that for which it was intended. It sounded funny. Heck, fear-mongering religious fundamentalists used to spin records backward to try to prove there were hidden satanic messages in the recordings. Seriously.

September 11 Thoughts. Eight Years Later.

As I was driving around at work today, I pondered two opposing interpretations of the September 11 attacks and their implications. I thought about it in terms of faith, and in terms of reason (you'll notice that neither of these involves the "9/11 truther" movement), both as interpretations of the events and the obvious implications of those interpretations.

I. Interpretations

1. To a reasonable person, the events of September 11, 2001 seem to have been committed by people driven mad by a literal interpretation of a violent mythology (SEE NOTE 1), combined with innovation, good planning, hard work, and a dedication to an ideology (i.e., faith). All of these things were put together to kill thousands of their fellow human beings, none of whom they knew -- or cared -- anything about.

2. If, on the other hand, you are a supernaturalist, believing on faith over reason as a way of understanding the world, you must have a different view. I will break this down into two groups: a. supernaturalists who do not believe in the Abrahamic god and b. supernaturalists who do believe in the Abrahamic god.

a. Supernaturalists who do not believe in the Abrahamic god have it easy. The problem appears simple: The victims and the perpetrators obviously believed in the wrong god(s) and they were punished for it.

b. The interpretation for supernaturalists who do believe in the Abrahamic god (i.e., an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent god or gods -- SEE NOTE 2) is similarly simple: It was God's will. There is no other way. Believing anything less is a betrayal of faith in that god. You either have complete faith in a deity, or you do not. God sent servants to kill thousands of people. We must accept that. This is an M.O., by the way, that is very common in Abrahamic mythology, and one of the "Clear Signs" that this god uses to show its existence (SEE NOTE 3).

II. Implications

Now let's look at the implications of these interpretations of the events.

1. A reasonable person will most likely come to the conclusion that we must work to help people to stop believing in absurd (and childish) notions of killing to appease an invisible friend. This means, among other things,

a. The teaching of critical thinking skills, so that people can judge reality from bullshit for themselves (this is just the old timeless classic "teach a man to fish" parable).

b . The teaching of factual information that shows our interrelatedness with other humans and even non-humans. An understanding of this interrelatedness will raise compassion.

c. The raising of awareness of mental illness, and a dedication to finding ways to treat it (if you don't believe that the terrorists were totally fucking insane, you don't belong in the "reasonable person" group).

To a reasonable person, the above three steps would be a great start, and a positive way to respond to the truly senseless violence of September 11, 2001.

2a. For supernaturalists who do not believe in the Abrahamic god, the implication is simple: The world needs to convert to their religion, then they won't be punished/fooled like this. It is a simple answer. Occam's razor, anyone?

b. For supernaturalists who do believe in the Abrahamic god, it is even easier: There is nothing to be done. All is God's will (SEE NOTE 4). The only thing that might need to be done is to work to dissipate any question there may be of that god's will. Faith can be hard work (but it is easier than assembling facts and thinking about them in a large context).

I'll admit that this is an off-the-cuff argument. I have never pondered this prior to today (9/11/09), so there must be holes in my analysis (if we may call it that). This is further exacerbated by my anger regarding this matter (I can still remember the smell of the towers burning). Feel free to point out any weaknesses.

Eight years after these events, we haven't even discussed the deeper causes of religious terrorism. I can't take a nail clipper on a plane, but there has been no public debate of the effects of brainwashing kids (or adults) with superstitious crap that hinders their ability to act as rational and compassionate human beings. Go ahead and explain that to me.

XXX

NOTE 1: I don't doubt for a second that there are people who will question my "driven mad" assertion. In pre-response, let me point out that there is no rational (i.e., sane) way to comprehend a literal interpretation of the Abrahamic mythology. The texts contradict themselves often, rarely express ideas in a reasonable fashion, evoke negative emotions such as fear and guilt, and repeatedly threaten the reader with punishment if they do not follow the idiotic instructions they are given. One must be pushed by such things into an irrational and emotionally-driven state. The result of this is much of what we read about in history books and in the daily newspapers.

NOTE 2: The reason I say "god or gods" is because of the Christian idea of the trinity (three-in-one god) concept. This is a major bone of contention with Muslims and Jews, and the Abrahamic God states quite plainly that it is blasphemous.

NOTE 3: I am tempted to post relevant scriptural passages here, but if you have spent any time with the Abrahamic scriptures, you don't need me to show how this god nails people it doesn't like.

NOTE 4: Please don't try the tired old "free will" crap. The Abrahamic God makes it quite clear in scriptures that it determines all outcomes. You could argue that a belief in free will is an outcome intended by that god, and that is a fair argument, but you might slip into a feedback loop that could explode your brain. Of course, that would just be God's will, as well.