Music • Sound • Video • Art

I’ll wager the cost of producing, pressing, distributing, and marketing a 45RPM single was not terribly different from the costs of putting out an album. But with an album, you could charge a lot more. To bump up profit, labels would have artists do an album’s worth of songs, shove a few hit singles on it, and force everyone to buy the more expensive album to get the content (the hits) they really want. So the “album” is a contrived framework created more for the convenience and bottomline of the record labels than for the artist.

Some artists took that format to new heights creating wonderful albums that offer an experience greater than the sum of its parts. Everybody has their personal examples: Avalon by Roxy Music, Dazzle Ships by OMD, Secrets of the Beehive by David Sylvian, Mezzanine by Massive Attack, Music Has the Right to Children from Boards of Canada… The list goes on. These works are stronger as a cohesive unit IMHO than as an incomplete collection of singles.

Does that mean someone should be forced to buy them as a complete set?

Before you answer consider that there are a lot more artists who simply concoct filler BS and slap that around one or two hits. Should you be forced to buy that crap as a complete set?

Well, the record companies think so. Apparently they have started taking works out of iTunes because they think selling the singles kill album sales. In other words, letting you get the tracks you want without having to pay for other tracks is hurting their bottomline. So their solution is NOT to fund better quality work or encourage artists to create better product. Nope. Their response is to force you to buy the BS if you want to get to the one or two nuggets.

I believe that albums that are better as a cohesive whole will sell as a cohesive whole because it is obvious that it should be bought as a cohesive whole. Or, as artists, let’s make it obvious to folks WHY it is better as a cohesive whole. Or encourage and incentivize them with additional content should they purchase your art in the way you intend. There are so many creative solutions to this issue. It boils down to: