Albums are dead.

That's what modern classical music needs. A rebranding. "A collection of songs." That connect with each other to some degree. With individual songs that are released as singles.

 

You could have made some other observation that actually spoke to the subject. Just an idea.

 

Next time

 

Excellent. I will be sure to make a retort.

 

geez, that's scary judging a format by one artist! that's funny...

 

I don’t think the person who thought symphonies were too long was joking or a troll. I attended a public middle school that was located in a “buffer zone” so I came into contact with many kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. They weren’t in the band or orchestra, and certainly couldn’t afford instruments or tickets to classical music concerts.

I suspect even today, 40+ years later, many have never stepped foot in a concert hall. As a result, they probably don’t have the musical understanding or the patience for much more than a three minute single. But, many of them remain my friends and they are good, hard working, honest people. But if you call them “stupid” for not knowing that symphonic movements are not called “songs”, I would expect them to become defensive and sarcastic, or even pretend they were joking. Treat each other with respect.

 

Some day finding a nice album (vinyl record,) will be like finding a painting (not a "print".) Something about a more tangible part of music, art, a theme, an "album" perhaps...

 

I'm hoping he's "saving them up" for a complete album. I take it you've heard them?
"Trombone" and "Tokyo Bay" are excellent.

 

I've only heard a couple of tracks. I'm trying to be patient -- as I would hope that there would be a compilation CD not too far down the road. (Maybe coupled with a live disc from Los Straightjackets tour?)

 

That is very true. Some artists ARE album-oriented artists only and have no goal of creating hits. Their goal is to produce the type of material that a particular group of people desire and will buy. It is more important for them to stick to a concept and to make sure that the different tracks fit together.
Going back to the 1960's and 70's, artists like Elton John had no intention of putting "hits" on his albums. Many of the songs became hits after the album was released. The Beatles made albums and didn't want to add songs which had already been released on singles, which had become hits. One of the reasons that "Past Masters" albums were released, to put those singles, which were not from an album, on an album after the fact. "Sgt. Peppers..." was a concept album and singles weren't released until decades later.

 

You make some important points. But actually, the trolling comment that you quoted of ARK had nothing to do with the songs and singles in classical music that ShockControl was putting forth. (Please see above.)

 

Concert tickets are astronomically priced, t-shirts are $45, and the performances are robotic.

 

They were adorable.

 

As a Modern Dad, I have no time for dud songs. Every song that comes on must be great.

That's why Streaming is so powerful. Only the good stuff. It's like a Mixtape without the work.

 

1. Apple Music
2. She's an "executive assistant"

 

My contention is that the "art" in music died around 1996 after the release of the last truly great album- OK Computer. Today these so-caled 'artists' aren't artists. They're marketers. So don't call Twenty-One Pilots "artists". They are Performing Marketers.

And consumers are smart, we've figured it out. So if these Performing Marketers want to mail in the creativity, fine, we'll mail in the streams. The last U2 album had exactly 1 good song on it. So that's all I stream. Therefore it's all they get paid for. The album is dead. Justice.

 

I would like to create a thread about people who repetitively come into threads and lecture on how threads are repetitive.

 

You are the reason the album is dead.

You overrate your performers, you undeservedly dub them "artists", when they release 12 songs of tripe and 2 songs that are above average you declare their album "brilliant", and then you go about convincing yourself and everyone else you speak to that the 2 worst songs are actually high "art" that only the enlightened can understand.

Your tolerance of crappy filler is what made the artists empowered to give you more filler and it's that filler that turned off everyone else and that's why streaming is justice and why streaming killed the album. Good riddance.

 

Maybe, but bands, songwriters, artists or whatever often have to churn out less than stellar stuff in order to create ze masterworks. Trouble is, they don't know which is which at the time.

 

I saw The Modern Dads in concert! They were a great marketing experience!
:--)

 

And that's why streaming is so good. Because...

Tame Impala has released 3 studio albums. They average 12 songs each. Each album had 2 outstanding tracks and 2 really good tracks.

So I put them on a single Apple Music Playlist called "Tame Impala". And there you go. 12 fantastic songs. The best Tame Impala album that ever could be made. It may have taken them 3 albums and 6 years for them to make their masterwork but I've constructed it and it's all the Tame Impala I listen to. Those 24 songs that hit the cutting room floor? They are dead to me. They don't exist.

 

I have done this. Not with Impalas though. Don't know what else to say. The world's a bit confusing for me with all this digital stuff. As a musician I know that I work in batches. Batches make for albums.

 

This has fairly often been discussed on CD threads where it is called CD bloat. IIRC the genesis of bloat was the realization by the consumer that a CD could hold 70 minutes of music. So there was a backlash when labels issued a 35 minute album on CD and charged $15 for it. I think that the fans were actually looking for a price that was geared to the amount of music on the disk. Instead groups were pressured to provide 50 and 60 minute albums to justify the higher price. I don't think the groups would have objected to a shorter time anymore than they did in the LP era.

But yes the result was Napster and later CD ripping to make comp CDs. The labels hated that so streaming made sense to them as an alternative. Of course unlike media the streamer can giveth and then taketh. Also, making comp disks sometimes prevents the multiple listens that some albums require before you start to appreciate their totality.

 

Yes, batches. But an "album" is supposed to be a distinct collection of songs that hold together and, as a primary objective, to be thought of as a symphony or an opera, something of lasting value.

But batches tend to be just "the next 14 songs I thought of" and that's the problem. Because sure as I'm sitting here typing this, the next 14 will be comprised of 2 great songs 2 decent album tracks and 8 tracks of garbage. Thankfully, the consumer wins now. As Sheryl Crow said, people listen to Playlists, the album isn't significant anymore and I don't generate enough quality material anyway, so I'm just going to release singles or some EP's now and then and that's that.

They should all follow her lead. We don't want The Next Great Album. We just want the next Ed Sheeran single so we can add it to our Ed Sheeran Playlist before we forget about Ed Sheeran and start to wonder where the next Lady Gaga single is.

 

Good post.

On the topic of "totality", see, I don't like totality, I don't like my artists to experiment, I don't like my artists to change. I like U2 to sound like U2, not Hank Williams. I like Radiohead to sound like Radiohead not Brian Eno. I want the next Taylor Swift song to sound like Shake It Off, not this crappy "I'm all grown up now I'm not a teen pop star anymore" marketing nonsense that's infected her music.

The New York Yankees as a brand is a winning baseball team. Ed Sheeran is a sweet acoustic singer-songwriter. I don't want the Yankees to try to play soccer and I don't want Ed Sheeran to rap. Modern Dad speaks for everyone.