Ask YC: what will replace the music album?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=94765

by Tichy • 19 years ago

16 33 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If in the future there will be no more CDs or music albums, how will people listen to music? Will everything just be "random shuffle"? Will they select genres and shuffle through them? Will they create their own playlists by arduous work? Will playlists become valuable content?

dood4• 19 years ago

The notion of artists releasing a collection of ordered tracks in a batch is pretty ingrained, I don't see that idea going anywhere soon. Or are you posing a hypothetical assuming otherwise?

Tichy2• 19 years ago

I've read news items that the album is already going away, for example the top sellers on itunes are individual songs, not albums.

dood4• 19 years ago

I'm not sure this means the album will go away altogether, its a nice format if you like the artists' work. The pick-n-mix thing is probably more suited to artists you don't care about so much, but like individual tracks. I think both albums and cherry-picking individual tracks can coexist quite happily.

buckpost• 19 years ago

My guess is new music services will emerge that will analyze your digital music collections, and create playlists for you. There are, of course, many of these around already but you'll see a flurry of activity soon. If the music labels were smart, they would be right in the middle of the action by offering a free service that would pay for itself by providing download services, Webcasts and advertising.

pg• 19 years ago

Music will be free for individual use. Musicians will make money from concerts and licensing. The album may persist as a form, but lengths will start to vary more.

iamelgringo• 19 years ago

Totally agree. From what I've been able to tell, there are five ways to make money with music: performance, licensing, merchandising, advertising paying directly for content.

Performance--people pay tickets for concerts.

Licensing--companies paying artists to play their music during TV/movies/commercials.

Merchandising--Artists selling concert t-shirts and posters for $60 a piece is the canonical example.

Advertising--Artists building their own "brand" and using their brand to shill other products. Beyonce comes to mind most recently. I've been seeing her all over the place selling everything.

Direct pay for content--The business model the RIAA is based on and that is dying.

Generally, music is now a digital download, and the artifice of the "Album as artform" is finally breaking apart. Truly some albums were art, but most were filler crap that was packaged around a high budjet single or two. People are barely willing to pay for a digital single much less entire albums.

colortone• 19 years ago

I agree.

Don't forget about that other "format" between single and album: the "EP". As a musician, I've always liked it: not as time consuming to produce as a 40+ minute "album" but more robust than a single track or two.

It's easier to digest and get your brain around (for listener and creator). Which means a lot...granularizing music consumption is good, I think more artists need to think in terms of EP when they are trying to break themselves. Plus, it trims the fat (i.e. filter yourself;-)

nkohari4• 19 years ago

YES. The demise of the EP is almost as tragic as that of B-sides. I wish more bands released EPs rather than full albums, because there's always a couple of songs that make you think, "how did that get in there?" (Still, like I said above, I greatly prefer listening to a group of songs rather than singles.)

BristolStoolMan• 19 years ago

Allows you to release stuff more often as well. Every 3 months you release an "EP", let people pay what they want for it. As long as the music is good, people will buy. I hope. :)

Tichy2• 19 years ago

I just wonder, on a practical level, how will people organize their music. If all they ever did was purchase individual songs, how will they go about "just listening to music"? Just playing one song will be unsatisfactory, so they need some kinds of playlists, or random shuffle over their whole collection. I have witnessed friends going the random shuffle route lately...

Creating a huge amount of playlists seems like (too) hard work.

Edit: OK, if music is free as in no purchase necessary, a whole new host of applications comes to mind. I think creating playlists will still be a valid task. Essentially it is already happening today, in the form of internet radio stations? Creating a playlist is basically what a radio station provides?

Alex3917• 19 years ago

"Music will be free for individual use."

There are many forms of music that can't be performed live for both economic and technical reasons. For example, it isn't reasonable to expect that people will pay 200 times as much for concert tickets for a rapper that has a 200 person gospel choir in the background. Similarly, many forms of music aren't able to be reproduced live, like certain types of electronic and industrial sounds. If we say there is no longer any prohibition against unauthorized copying of music then, while it's unlikely we'll start losing entire genres of music wholesale, there are certain artistic choices and stylistic devices that just won't be easily available.

nkohari4• 19 years ago

I really hope albums don't go anywhere. For a lot of groups, an album of songs showcases their artistic perspective at a certain point in time. Usually, the overall tone of a band changes between albums.

I'll even go so far as to say that the music will be less enjoyable if it wasn't for albums. For example, compare U2's The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, both of which are fantastic examples of "tone" albums. If you would have taken half the songs from The Joshua Tree and put them on Achtung Baby, and vice-versa, both albums would have sounded like a mess. I don't think the individual songs would have had the same impact as they did when combined with other songs with similar tone.

And that's not even considering concept albums, which are always interesting. A world with no Dark Side of the Moon is not one I want to live in! :)

dood4• 19 years ago

I'd love to see mashups become more legit.

paulsb• 19 years ago

Albums are great. Singles have always been released as a means to get people to stump up cash for the album, and this should still be the case. There are many albums that have great songs on them, but these songs are probably too unsuitable/unprofitable to be released to the mainstream audience; thus, the release of "appealing" singles to get fans and new fans to go and buy the album. Albums also provide variety by exposing listeners to different styles X if everyone just bought the singles, then everyone would only buy the "club bangers" that get released or become popular.

If the whole system goes to a buy-per-single model, albums, per se, will probably evolve into "bodies of work" for that period of an artist's life, which could actually benefit the artist because it will allow them to release material that would not normally make it onto an album, essentially allowing the artist to say "buy whatever you want". Buying-per-single will also be a real ball-ache if you have to preview every song to find the ones you want; hence, my support for albums.

If the music becomes free, then money will probably come from concerts, merchandise, etc. Heaven forbid that there will be no ad-supported model! Imagine having to listen to adverts between tracks...oh, the inhumanity!

Personally, I like albums and will buy them over a couple of singles because it will add up to the same cost and be much more convenient. Ideally, the whole industry should follow the model of a particular website where you buy music by the megabyte, which is obviously linked to the quality that you have it encoded at.

davidw• 19 years ago

I could see picking and mixing singles right now because so many of the groups ... well... aren't all that good, so you only get the one or two good things they do. If people went back to actually liking groups that have more staying power, perhaps that would strengthen the idea of the album again?

rglullis• 19 years ago

A few months ago I saw on TV a story about people working as "personal music stylists", or something like that. Their job is to find the right music or set list for events and parties, or to define a playlist for a gym class, or to just load someone's iPod with music of a given genre.

In short, they get money to act as a music recommendation filter.

mynameishere4• 19 years ago

For decades, singles were the main money-maker and albums were released afterward with not much expectation of success. Buddy Holly and the Beatles started releasing albums without filler material, and that became the standard mode for a while. Led Zep, Pink Floyd, the Stones, etc, could pull off an entire album of decent, coherent music, but I doubt any bands today can. The overall degree of talent is just completely different now, and I'm frankly shocked to hear even a single decent song anymore.

Truth be spoken, I'm not sure it matters anymore. Maybe I'm wrong. Does anybody know any albums that can compare with the greats of the past?

As went classical, so went pop music. It's just finished, and all the artistic people seem to have shifted to video games, which just keep getting better and better.

dood4• 19 years ago

Led Zep, Pink Floyd, the Stones, etc, could pull off an entire album of decent, coherent music, but I doubt any bands today can. The overall degree of talent is just completely different now, and I'm frankly shocked to hear even a single decent song anymore.

Don't mistake the pathetic state of pop for the state of music overall. There is loads of great stuff, perhaps more than ever - the difference is that little of the good stuff gets on the radio because the traditional music industry is killing itself, and is now in its death-throws.

I predict (or at least hope) that the web and a resurgence of live music will bring about a new golden age of sound (for all - not just those who make the effort to dig up the good stuff).

Edit: I'm not being allow to reply to mynameishere's request, "Name some", presumably because I've made too many comments in a short space of time (though I can't imagine there will be many spammers with 400+ karma). Anyway, here's what I was hoping to post:

It depends what genres you like - music is now extremely diverse and fragmented, and I am generally interested in less mainstream stuff, so I don't know about many great artists working in the traditional pop/rock genres. So here is a random, eclectic selection of groups that use guitars and that spring to mind (though I am a little out of touch for the past couple of years): Mars Volta, Deerhoof, OOIOO, Lightning Bolt, Strapping Young Lad, Mogwai, Neurosis, Godspeed You Black Empreror, Tool...

There are a host of other interesting genres with amazing artists and a lot of creativity you wouldn't hear from if you didn't look, like IDM, Dubstep, Hip-Hop...

I will readily agree that there isn't much like Hendrix or Led Zep and similar - but I would argue the current pop industy climate effectively prohibits the emergence of those sort of rock-stars.

aston• 19 years ago

There are plenty of pop acts that could pull off a complete (good) album if it were actually smart business.

mynameishere4• 19 years ago

There is loads of great stuff

Name some. I'm always willing to listen to new acts.

chandler• 19 years ago

>> As went classical, so went pop music. It's just finished, and all the artistic people seem to have shifted to video games, which just keep getting better and better.

Ever heard of a reality tunnel? Because I'm just not seeing this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel

dejb• 19 years ago

.. or maybe you are just getting old.

mynameishere4• 19 years ago

All those groups pre-date me.

izak30• 19 years ago

What I want to see (this really applies to TV as well...with the writer's strike and all, the timing seems more apt to them):

I want an artist to release how they _want_ to release. I think some artists would be fine only releasing singles or covers or mashups. I think that others want a group of songs that are only meant to be together, with some physical content (album covers, etc, has anyone seen Tool's releases? I'm not really a fan of the music, but aesthetically and conceptually they are amazing), -and- some that may only be released with videos. I want to see distributors and publishers take a much smaller cut, but from more artists. This would take a cue directly from long-tail economics.

I want artists to be artists, and not to starve. The 'album' isnt dying, it's just shrinking, because it's relavence has dwindled, most artists make groups of singles that should be released as such, and the 'Dark Side of the Moon's and the 'Physical Graffiti's of the world are disappearing.

rrival• 19 years ago

I'd like to find a way to assess the role that predictive popularity filters have on the longevity of new artists (http://www.hitpredictor.com/about.php). How does having something like this in place not invite continuously creating the moving average of derivative crap?

Further, is the current lack of quality a reflection that artists are pushed before they have time to develop longevity or that talent isn't 'recognized' unless it fits the mold du jour?

Is the ClearChannel effect, the automation of radio, contributing to this need for homogenized pulp? It's such a large system to diagnose.

ian• 19 years ago

I think it's interesting to look at genres of music where the album has never been particularly important - for example dancehall and ragga in Jamaica. Dancehall producers will create an instrumental (riddim) and then release it publicly as a dub plate for the many different MCs to rhyme over. This results in a large number of versions of the same instrumental being played by DJs in clubs around Kingston. Quickly the response from the dancefloor combined with the DJ's opinion filters out worse versions and leaves one track standing above the rest. This track will then be the big smash on that riddim and really blow up. That track is typically the best vocal on the best riddim. It's wisdom of crowds applied to the composite elements of the track.

As the free availability of individual tunes results in more remixing, more collaboration and more playlisting a system that determines the optimal permutations will be very valuable. My guess is that the optimal permutations will be inferred from the behaviour of music fans on the web so no one will own it as such, however the experts and tastemakers will become more visible and may be able to monetise this ability.

Live recordings will become more important because as albums get broken up by file sharing the selection an artist chooses in concert will become more meaningful.

agentbleu• 19 years ago

its getting simpler to make and listen to your music.

http://myplaylist.biz is a good example

ivankirigin• 19 years ago

A set of bits of music with a consistent theme is a very old and good idea.

The shrink-wrapped $20 piece of plastic you buy today will soon be less common than vinyl.

voidfiles• 19 years ago

Marshal McHluhen said that the medium is the message. This I think applys well here. Albums are a medium for music distribution, in otherwords albums are albums, and the other forms of distribution are different. I think that as we see the shift from destination, or event listening. ie popping the record on the turntable and consuming a whole album, to a networked fill in the cracks type listening we will see a new form of music consumption. Their will always be people who love the album, but I think the new world order is on demand anywhere in the world. That means short punchy songs, and everyonce in awhile something longer. The web can save the long format audio though, if you can think of a internet site as emmersive you might be able to do a long format animation and sound combined thing that you can watch on the web.

Ask YC: what will replace the music album?

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