Drummer Tommy Lee Says "No One Buys [Complete Albums] Anymore"

Indeed. Most people just want one catchy song at a time to download.

 

It's not wrong to just want a song or two from an album.

 

Yes. And there's a big risk that people who are actually now willing pay for physical products are not willing to do that for downloads. If there's only downloads they might also start downloading/copying it for free.

 

Bingo. People like me are willing to pay for music on physical media. I don't really want downloads at all but if that is what is going to forced on me I will join in with the "freeloaders" and get the stuff for free. I will NOT pay for something I do not want (downloads). The industry loses my $$ if downloads is all they will offer.

Pretty soon me & my kind will die off & I guess it won't matter though.

 

Tommy's certainly got a point. Obviously anecdotal, but I was at a neighbor's over memorial day and flipped thru the tracks on his iphone. Hardly any full albums -- mostly just classic tracks from a selection of artists. I'm sure he has CDs stashed away somewhere and maybe he just cherrypicked songs from those CDs but I bet there's a lot of people that don't want to go thru the "hassle" of ripping, for example, Pearl Jam's debut CD when you can just wirelessly download "Evenflow" and "Alive" directly to your iphone for $2.

I only buy albums (usually amazon deals or emusic) but buy the occasional track for my 8 year old or download the free song of the day from Amazon (which I generally never get around to listening to).

 

About album sales, did you notice this from Billboard related to the latest charts:

Year to date album sales stand at 136.89 million, up less than 1% compared to the same total at this point last year (136.22 million). It is the third straight week where year-to-date album volume is greater than the same time in the prior year.​

Have we finally reached the bottom? Here's the link: http://www.billboard.com/#/news/adele-reclaims-no-1-on-billboard-200-book-1005231062.story

 

Nah. We'll get the last laugh, brother! I think that it's much easier to haunt a computer than a CD.

 

IMHO, I can't believe people still believe this.

 

You don't think that free, illegal downloads are doing massive harm to the music industry?

 

Exactly.

iTunes came along and said to the record industry, give the people what they want. It turns out they don't want to buy eight crappy songs in a package with three good ones. Who'da thunk?

 

[+QUOTE=Oatsdad;6657271]You don't think that free, illegal downloads are doing massive harm to the music industry?[/QUOTE]

If you could wave a wand and stop illegal downloads tomorrow, how much do you think music sales would increase?

There have been academic studies on this, and I'm not one to think academicians have it all figured out (economists for example seem to have a notoriously poor grasp of reality), but I don't completely discount the studies that show the impact on sales to be negligible. And I suspect the effect is not uniform. It helps some and hurts others.

I believe there is an impact, but the music industry, by releasing fewer albums, concentrating on the least substantial kinds of music, offering poorer and poorer quality sound-wise, charging too much for MP3s, probably has done a lot of damage on its own. Can't blame it all on bittorrent.

And remember, it was after all home cassette taping that killed the music industry.

 

I'm old enough to remember the home taping thing, but that was a drop in the bucket compared to Internet downloading. When you copied something at home, you needed to know someone who had the album, borrow it and go through the slow process of duplicating it.

Now, you don't need to know ANYONE involved and you can get hours of music in minutes.

I won't say illegal downloading is the only factor that's hurt the music industry, but I think it's the main one...

 

I've never ever bought just one song. Don't care about the I-Tunes era. Kids are stupid...they're missing out on great album tracks. Just because the record company chose not to release a song as single does not make it a bad song. It's a shame that ppl just go and buy one song or just a specific song off I-Tunes and neglect an album....Oh well, these are the times we live in.

 

People used to buy singles (45s) all the time. Not just stupid kids.

Now it's easy again. I'm not surprised at all that there is a resurgence in the single given they are easy to purchase again.

 

These thread are always entertaining to read.

 

There are kids on this forum. Stupid kids are not the only people who buy single tracks. Are you implying that albums with only one good song don't exist?

 

I hardly ever buy single tracks myself. But that's mainly because of lossy formats. Let me download a FLAC of a good song for a dollar, and I'll buy more. But... case in point. Most of Josh Rouse's new Spanish-language album just wasn't to my taste. There were two songs on it I couldn't live without and I got the MP3s. Maybe someday I can get FLACs.

I guess if the whole album really is great, it is a shame if people only get single tracks. But you could have said the same in the 70s when people bought the Honkey Cat single or Rocket Man, and "neglected" Elton's album. I'd prefer to have a choice, a choice in a higher quality format.

 

Downloading has not killed the music industry, lack of change has. There was an opportunity 20 years ago to fix things, instead the industry buried it's collective head in the sand and sent their lawyers to try and stop changing times. Very few businesses can last 50+ years without growth and change. I don't think the "formula" of the music industry has really varied since the Beatles or Elvis for that matter. Single, single, album, tour, single, repeat next year. Technology is never the killer of an industry, but an industry desperate to hang onto old business models does. IMO the music industry put a lot of time & money into stopping downloading when really all they were doing was holding off the inevitable. It's been 20 years since Napster changed the game and the industry is still crying about the loss instead of making up new rules and a profitable business model. The days of the super rich rock star is probably over. The good news is instead of kids starting a band to become a star, they are going to do it for the love of music and we music lovers are going to benefit greatly. Physical media is not dead but sales and expectations are never going to be what they used to be. Now that my rant is over, I will either listen to a record or watch a laserdisc.

 

With the exception of a very few selected bands/artists, I always preferred a well-assembled compilation to the individual albums.... there is just too much filler in nearly everyone's album output.

 

Synthfreek, I want to vote for you as avatar of the month....acciiiieeeed!

Anyways, in a day and age where searching rapidshare or filestube will turn up 50 links for any possible music you could ever want, I'd have to say that, yeah, illegal downloads are crushing music sales...with no end in sight. Torrenting is old news when you can find a direct link to anything you ever wanted in about 15 seconds.
j

 

I'm with you 100%, artists ''at least real artists'' don't write singles with I-Tunes in mind, they write the best songs they can and put them on an album, the hacks.....well that's another story.

 

This surely isn't true for me or any of my peers that I'm aware of. I basically only buy whole albums.

I've only bought one single (in the digital era) that I can remember and that was Empire State of Mind, and only because I couldn't find it on an album. It sounded so bad that I only listened to it once.

I've often realized that you can tell my economic history by looking at my record collection. The only time I really bought singles was when I was economically challenged. When the single was unique, of course, that was a different story.

Also when I was a kid I bought more singles than albums, but since then, not really.

 

There are many economically challenged people out here. So maybe that is a factor. However, it wouldn't matter if I won the $100 million lottery, I would not be buying many albums at $10 or $12 or $15 with one or two songs on it I liked and 7 - 10 songs I didn't. It goes against my grain. I think for most people, they just like the song on the radio, or the song in the commercial, or the song they heard on YouTube, and they want that song, without the distraction of other songs they are indifferent to.

In such a case, do you buy the album anyway? Or do you just pass on it and do without the one or two songs you thought were worthwhile?

 

Well for me I generally bought the albums, but that was always an issue to deal with.

I've bought many albums for just one song before, and even have bought comps for just one song, even sometimes when I already had all the other songs on that comp. I've even driven hours just for the priveledge. For the most part I have no regrets about any of those purchases.

Music is funny. I'm pretty lazy and will not work unless I make my full rate, which means I'm not working much these days. It's just not worth my time. That said, I'll do quite a bit of work or spend quite a lot of time to get a song or album I want. I'll even spend more to get it now instead of waiting.

I guess the former is a labor for money, and the later is a labor of love.

 

Generally, if I like a song from the radio enough to go out and buy it, I usually become curious to hear more from that artist. For me to like the song, there was probably something in the artist's voice, or the arrangement, that really appealed to me, and I automatically want to find out if there is more where that came from. More often than not, my instincts turn out to be correct, and my favorite songs on the album rarely end up being the singles that first got my attention--the best songs, IMO, are often too long or otherwise too adventurous to be single material.

Now, if you know that you ONLY like the single, of course you shouldn't be forced to buy other songs. I just can't imagine only liking the single. In any event, if you only buy singles, how will you ever know whether the other album tracks would or would not eventually become favorites?