Discusses how it can rescue struggling album sales as the single-song digital download further grows in popularity.
We’ve all known for quite some time that all is not right in the music world. I’m not talking about piracy, profits or losses, or the usual economic-centered conundrums, but rather about the quality of music itself. It used to be that an album was an album, a two-sided journey where a group was your tour guide on a two hour musical experience. Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” or U2’s “The Joshua Tree” are easy examples.
For some time however, songs have become disposable and forgettable. Like candy they leave the listener unsatisfied and oftentimes a bit sick to the stomach. Albums are even marketed that way it seems, with flashy packaging emblazoned with a reminder that an album contains a particular song.
It’s as though they have to talk you into buying it, that a certain track will be enough to sway you. There was no sticker on Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced” album reminding buyers it contained “Purple Haze.” They should be in the business of selling an album not a track, and I think this is has been forgotten somewhere along the line.
The rise in digital music distribution has only exacerbated the problem, with a single 99-cent iTunes download becoming a make or break event for an artist, particularly now that it has become the leading music retailer in the United States. Thus, the album has grown further marginalized as record companies seem to feed into the single download craze in a desperate attempt to stave of perennial economic losses due to the decline in physical CD sales.
It seems I’m not alone in feeling that something’s amiss in the way that the music industry has nurtured the album over the last few years. Quincy Jones, American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, Academy Award-winning film composer, and trumpeter recently wrote an article called “How to Save the Album” that describes precisely how to do just that.
“Ever since Shawn Fanning launched the original Napster — and even more so now that legitimate downloading has taken off via iTunes — I’ve been hearing lots of talk about the death of the album,”he writes.
He continues by pointing out that single tracks “…whether purchased legitimately or downloaded illegally – are cutting into the sales of albums, which are far more profitable.”
So what’s the solution? It must “rise up to the challenge” and “…focus on making better music that’ll make fans want more than just one song.”
It sounds straightforward enough, but he too thinks that somewhere somehow the record industry became so concerned with profits and losses that it lost sight of what business it’s in – making quality music that fans will enjoy and want to purchase.
He writes:
Artists, producers, songwriters and A&R folks: Rise up to the challenge and make your album so good that fans will want to buy the whole thing. I realize every album can’t have six or seven top 10 singles, like Michael Jackson and I were blessed with on “Thriller” and “Bad,” but you’ve got to try. If it’s good enough, the fans will buy it. Maybe they’ll want to whet their appetite by only buying a track or two at first, but if you keep coming out with good tracks and pique their interest, they’ll be back.
There’s actually an opportunity here to sell more than just the album. Release a digital track early. That’s an easy sell, but make sure the rest of the album delivers that same kind of quality and excitement, and they’ll be back to buy additional tracks and/or hopefully the entire album as you conceived it. And don’t forget special packaging for the physical product. If you and your team deliver quality goods, the fans will want to buy it.
Can you imagine a world in which people only bought a single download of Miles Davis’ “So What” instead of the greatest jazz album of all time, “Kind of Blue?” Or “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” instead of Marvin Gaye’s complete masterpiece “What’s Going On?” Or even a single track from Herbie Hancock’s Grammy Award-winning “River: The Joni Letters” instead of the whole collection?
We need to stop complaining about single-song downloads and instead focus on making better music that’ll make fans want more than just one song.
The record industry has neglected to focus on the art of making music for some time in my opinion so the challenge it must rise up to may not be an easy one. I mean it seems the real artists out there are the ones who’ve managed to break free of the confining dictates of record execs and struck out on their own, like Radiohead and NIN for example.
Even Paul McCartney was flabbergasted recently that EMI wanted to take 6 months to figure out how to promote his album in advance when it only took him a few months to make the darn thing. He subsequently left for Starbucks which gave him carte blanche to produce, promote, and distribute “Memory Almost Full” as he saw fit. It ultimately debuted at number 3 on the Billboard album charts.
“This was how we used to operate,” McCartney noted. “I remember John [Lennon], for instance, writing Instant Karma and demanding it was released the following week.”
When comes down to it, the record industry is distributing a form of art and not disposable content that is oftentimes rendered unrecognizable by the time it reaches music fans. It must nurture talent where it sees it and give it the freedom to take shape. It must quit lamenting its losses and realize that fans want one thing – quality – and so long as it makes good ALBUMS and not just tracks, the fans will always be there in droves to buy them.
Related Posts
- Slipknot Frontman: ‘Record Labels to Blame for Illegal Downloading’
- Music industry tries to increase charges for music downloads
- Downloadable music changing face of industry
- Record Industry Sues XM Satellite
- Radiohead Shocks Record Industry With Free Download of New Album
Loading ...
that was certainly refreshing…
Go Quincy! It’s so easy to just look at the numbers and forget what it’s really all about. Having art that’s so good that you are proud to own a copy being a part of something bigger not just a marketing machine.
The other day I was thinking why doesn’t the music industry take advantage of the huge music fanbase of filesharers and try and auction off rare music in small publishing sizes. With this you would gain the right to distribute the music not for profit to whoever you want. If they could pull this off they could charge much more hoping people will pool together to get it for their tracker. Not sure if it would work but at least I have more ideas then the music industry.
Then things would get interesting between trackers not to mention the millions required to buy out one song wouldn’t be worth it to any individual tracker.
It would be curious to see how it would play out what the price should be set at for legal distribution of a song or album for free. I’m thinking their may be some kind of market that could be created for it would it be worth it who knows. Personally I could see initiatives like this from individual bands like NIN before I see it from the big 4.
I agree so much with Quincy and Paul about the qualitative and the dynamic aspect of record releases.
Both opinions though are not considering enough the dramatic change of possibilities that single song or small quantity releases will have in the future.
The Jeannie is out of the bottle, and it has left our income security in shambles, this much is clear to me.
However, the artistic freedom that comes when an artist has a unique inspiration for one particular style and stays with that for 1,2 or 3 songs but then gets inspired by other styles, moods or genres – should they be forced to produce the mandatory 53 minutes minimum for the old school CD?
Since when can we go to a modern day Picasso and demand he paint 10 more pictures of the same series?
Artistically that's just nonsense. We all know that the muse doesn't function industrially and has the same quantitative output every time. Thats' the death of creativitity.
In between the extremes fall the variety of albums such as Sergeant Pepper – where, dear Quincy, do you still find such daring in pursuit of variety ? Why don't we tell Nashville to stop outputting this cookie cutter (yet amazingly well recorded) re-tread musical copycat BS ?
We can't take back the single download option (or file sharing) so let's be creative and work towards a feasible solution (which I know has not been grasped by anyone out there) and forget about back-tracking to hold on to the ghost of the album by the sheer quantity of songs we might want to sell per customer or fan.
Instead, let's ask I tunes and the other outlets to
1.) give us a full 1 minute preview for each song- and
2.) may every song have it's own artwork!
Furthermore, the place where the album/CD has it's rightful place is the merchandise table at the concert venue – those album sales keep the artist on the road, and they are propelled by the fact that the audience is so inspired by the artist that they want to "take them home" to commemorize their experience.
That's what the album is great for, so of course we will have to keep printing collections of our material to have available at such venues or concerts.
Re: Free File Sharing:
I spent more money in the last 2 years on downloads that I ever spent on CD purchases – I support that model with my wallet. May that help to drown out the free downloading because every person with half a brain knows that the latter has to kill the entire branch over a short period of time.
And lastly, can we talk about the hideous shape of record stores in the US:
I could go on for hours about the attitude of the (minimum wage paid) sales staff in Goth outfit and every piercing imaginable to the dead rows of albums I can't sample, and if they can be sampled, half of the ($ 5.-) KOSS headphones are broken (see BORDERS stores in L.A. or Santa Barbara) …in short: Retail has effectively killed itself, sorry to say, I HATE US record stores with a passion because their sales infrastructure is plain and pitifully dumb.