(non-classical) did itunes destroy the concept of an album

[DavidW]

Listening to Arcade Fire's Suburbia today.  It is stunning to hear rich, beautiful songs thematically connected.  I just don't hear "albums" much anymore like that.  It seems that pop music has drifted into singles and albums as collections of singles.  Do you think that's true?  Some people blame it on itunes.  Has itunes changed us from album based listening to song based listening?

[Lethevich]

iTunes typifies it, but every aspect of online distribution encourages this pick and mix style. It personally doesn't really affect me, but it seems to be as liberating to some as annoying to others. I was listening to a game reviewer answering email questions on his Youtube channel, and he used iTunes changing the way people listen as an example of the outdated styles of production and distribution being clung on to by media companies who are increasingly suffering financially by not adapting to it.

It doesn't necessarily have to change the way that albums sound, and arguably if it does then it's the fault of the producers for not factoring in both groups of listeners. An example, I guess, might be Thom Yorke's solo album - which seems to stem from a strong "let's write a good album" rather than commercial motivation, but I heard Harrowdown Hill - the least accessable track from it, and integral to the album's structure - played during an interlude on another livestream, and the people in chat were asking what it was, and several mentioned that they were downloading it after their question was answered. Whether their dl was legit or not is irrelevant - it's an iTunes model "I like that song, I will pick it up" being utilised for something that is the opposite of a cynical chart hit, and will possibly leave the downloader wanting more.

I also think that the amount of very cheap and widespread options available to the listner (even if restricted to full albums) is increasing by such a magnitude every decade, that even ignoring digital distribution, people are less inclined to listen quite so closely and repeatedly to the same album. This can be as much good as bad, as it means that the listener doesn't have to settle for something that they only like rather than love. It also encourages musical pigeonholing and stylistic factionalism, which inevitably comes back to niche internet distribution anyway

You might be right that albums like that could die out in terms of chart success in the pop market, but they will always be around and making good money because there will always be a demand for songs that are not simplified, and for "meaning" over the entire product. Entire genres such as post-rock seem obsessed with the concept of the album as an arc, and the music is high quality but will rarely ever have chart success.

Sorry for the ramble ;_:

[DavidW]

Insightful and interesting post Lethe.  Looks like you've had this on your mind too!

[kishnevi]

It's not really Itunes so as much as the change in commercial radio and media, which seem to have settled on the model of audiences with short attention spans need to be diverted by the Next New Big Thing.  And albums by settled bands don't fit into that comfortably.    We can only hope that internet modes of distribution help those sort of albums survive.

[westknife]

I'd blame it on Napster and the first years of music-downloading more than iTunes, which was just Apple's way of cashing in on a phenomenon that already existed. But also as others have said, it's not necessarily a bad thing.