The War of Albums and Singles

But these doomsday stories came before it was certain that streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube would actually cement themselves as the dominant way we listen to music, and not just be a temporary trend. Now, the music industry is at a point where nearly every song imaginable, popular or not, is available to play for free, on demand, wherever you are. And for all the myriad of faults and advantages this manner of listening has, it’s become the norm. This will have a major impact on whether or not the album doomsday will actually take place. Singles and albums are now on a completely level playing field as far as ease of access goes. Since the consumer now has an unbiased choice over which to consume, which will prove to be more popular?

According to Edison Research, the most popular method of listening to music is still traditional AM/FM radio (Robley). In spite of the ubiquitous internet, over half of the music a person listens to in a day comes from radio. Radios aren’t conducive to listening to albums at all – in fact, in many places it’s illegal to broadcast an entire album on the radio. The furthest radios go towards supporting albums is playing singles to promote their accompanying albums – but when singles are the only songs purchased off albums in iTunes, what exactly is the point of having an accompanying album along with it? Correlating with this, internet radio stations often operate in the same way. Pandora, Beats and Slacker Radio all advertise curation and algorithms meant to create continuous playlists of music you’ll enjoy. While greatly beneficial to discovering new music, a majority of users surveyed use the services to provide playlists of consistently good background music, rather than to find brand new artists and genres to dig into.

Spotify is one of the only popular modern music sources that provides albums and other releases in order, yet it too does not lend itself to listening to full albums. With ads inserted between every two to three songs, the continuous listening experience of an album is automatically disrupted, unless you have a plus account. On artist’s pages, the first items featured are their most popular songs. Additionally, one of the most popular features of Spotify among its users are the playlists. Like radio, these lend themselves entirely to playing and promoting singles, and they are one of the most promoted features of Spotify, appearing on the main page, sidebars, and everywhere you look (Spotify: Year in Music 2014). The ubiquity of single song plays is so great that even Billboard’s charts have changed to reflect it, by including that 1,500 song streams from one album will now count as the same as one album sale in their eyes. This is the first and biggest change to the Billboard albums chart in over 23 years, reflecting how much times have changed in the last decade (Molanphy).

Album-wise, the statistics taken from my survey are also grim. Of the entire survey, only one respondent marked that they preferred listening to albums in order over listening to individual songs. Everyone else marked that they preferred jumping around their own favorite songs or listening to playlists/radio curated by other people. The same student interviewed above stated that she didn’t want artists to stop making albums and only make singles. But when asked when she had last listened to an album, instead of songs selected from various sources, she couldn’t remember. The student supported the idea of artists releasing albums but not the reality of listening to them.

Album-wise, the statistics taken from my survey are also grim. Of the entire survey, only one respondent marked that they preferred listening to albums in order over listening to individual songs. Everyone else marked that they preferred jumping around their own favorite songs or listening to playlists/radio curated by other people. The same student interviewed above stated that she didn’t want artists to stop making albums and only make singles. But when asked when she had last listened to an album, instead of songs selected from various sources, she couldn’t remember. The student supported the idea of artists releasing albums but not the reality of listening to them.

So it seems the standalone song has attained a totally dominant position in today’s society. However, there’s other evidence demonstrating that the album is also just as popular as ever. Major artists continue to release albums with massive success. Taylor Swift’s 1989 sold over one million copies in a single week, and went on to sell 8.6 million copies as of February 2015. The anticipation for and release of a major album is just as much of an event as it was in the past. Albums become trending topics on Twitter – Kendrick Lamar’s most recent album To Pimp A Butterfly is a prime example of this – and generated nearly as much buzz and excitement as a new single would.

Vinyl sales are also, to many people’s surprise, rising drastically in popularity. Despite not sporting the ability to easily select tracks or portably listen to, vinyl records are selling more than they did in the 90’s, so much so that the Official Chart Company is re-introducing a vinyl sale chart in the UK. While sales of vinyl make up less than 3% of all music purchases, the recent rise demonstrates an underground renewed interest in listening to albums themselves. Vinyl records require specialize equipment and attention to listen to, and restrict the listener to hearing the sides of an album in order, with no fast forwarding or skipping around.

Lastly, with Youtube opening up the limit on video lengths, some users have begun uploading full album videos, with an artist’s entire album collected in one video. As they aren’t interrupted by ads, and don’t require navigation between videos, these provide one of the most seamless album listening experiences, as far as streaming goes. When not present, playlists are often put together of an artist’s full album, stringing together individual songs to complete the set. These videos are exceptionally popular – the most watched on YouTube, for Skrillex’s Bangarang, sports 25 million views as of the time of writing. The most unusual quality of these videos is this: the ones with most plays nearly all belong to older artists who have pre-established fan-bases (such as Phil Collins, Radiohead, or Metallica), or newer indie artists with a strong following (such as Tycho, XXYYXX, or Birdy). Only a rare few belong to artists that commonly see radio play – the most popular full album videos tend to belong to artists that aren’t extremely successful on a commercial level.

At first, this data seems to be in conflict with itself – both the album and the single seem to be experiencing a renaissance. So what is the explanation? The observation made about the ‘full album’ videos is a key to figuring it out. Of all things, it seems to come down to a marked divide in the listening habits of the public at large. Almost everyone likes, enjoys, and consumes music, but the way they listen to music can be divided into two groups: people who care and people who don’t. This may sound a little harsh, but it isn’t meant to be insulting. Many people simply want to listen to music. They don’t mind what music it is, as long as it sounds good, meets their preferred style, and isn’t obtusely different or unlikable (and if it is, they skip it). What artist is playing doesn’t matter. As long as the genre fits, the music is good, and they don’t have to think about finding or selecting the music they listen to, they’re happy. These are the people who fall into the “don’t care” group, and there isn’t anything wrong with them for doing so. They simply consume music on a casual level. The “don’t cares” represent a larger part of the population, which is why their interests are more often more highly represented in the world of music.

The other group of people who “do care” listen to music in a far more different way. Instead of listening to recommended playlists or internet radio, they actively seek out new artists to follow and new music to become passionate about. They make their own playlists and often have large amounts of favorite music to draw upon and listen to. If they do listen to a recommended playlist or radio, they pay close attention to the artists being played and make special note to come back to the ones they like. These more passionate fans are likely to anticipate new releases from artists, and listen to full albums when they come out, rather than only pay attention to singles. They are interested in everything the artist has to say, and they consider being passionate about their favorite music a part of their identity.

In today’s world, the larger “don’t care” market supports the singles, while the “do care” market continues to support artists and their full works. It seems the music industry has, in fact, operated in this way for a very long time. The only change is that the album is no longer popular in the eyes of the “don’t cares”. In the 60s-90s it was obviously much more convenient to buy a CD, vinyl or cassette with many songs on it rather than just one, but the internet has levelled the playing field, and now the cost of consuming a single is the same as consuming an album, but requires less attention and time. The popular success of the album had a lot to do with it being a great medium of artist expression, but commercially, had mostly to do with the value of buying a bunch of songs at once instead of one at a time.

The other change is, while in the past, the “do cares” formed a passionate minority of music lovers across the world, today they form their own majority of music consumers. Online magazines such as Pitchfork specifically cater to indie music scenes, and a plethora of other publications specialize further, devoting themselves to writing and blogging about individual genres. In the past, the “do care” music scene was large enough to support its own market, albeit underground. But with growing populations and more accessible music, the number of “do cares” has risen to the point where vinyl albums can make a comeback, obscure genres like “glitch hop” can spawn dozens of dedicated magazines and blogs, and artist can make a decent living without having to break into the mainstream.

Is the album dead? No. Is the album as popular as it used to be? Again, no. Barring a renaissance in the public eye, albums are not going to ever be as commercially popular or relevant as they once were. Popular music is going the way of the single, permanently. But a secondary market exists where the album can thrive as a dominant form of creative expression. As long as there exist people who care about music and the people who make it, the album will always be around.