The Influence Of Music Streaming Services On The Use And Creation Of Albums
Albums have been recorded since 1890 when Emile Berliner recited the ballad Der Handschuch by Friedrich Schiller. Since then the album, as well as music as a whole, have been molded in many different ways to fit the fashion of the time. Interestingly a lot of these trends have repeated themselves, which leads me to believe that the future of the album lies somewhere in it’s past. This article written by Bobby Owsinski and published to the Forbes website on March 10th 2018 claims that albums have fallen by the wayside and that they may never see a return. I however would argue that it has just reached another stage in it’s life. Merriam-Webster defines an album as “One or more recordings (as on tape or disc) produced as a single unit”.
The way we listen to music has changed and therefore music must change to adapt. Examples of this in other aspects of song production are things like song length, instrumentation and even the lyrics of songs themselves. It can also be said that until the late 1990’s changes had been relatively small compared to the changes made in the 2000’s. Between the 1950’s and the early 90’s not a lot had changed in terms of instrumentation or even song length; the majority of the changes that can be seen are in the overall style and sound of a genre.
This slow change was one of the factors in continuing what is known as the ‘Album era’. The ‘Album era’ was a stretch of time generally stated as being between the late 50’s and the early 2000’s. During this time a large majority of music sales were in album form, the albums were either records, cassettes or CDs. The ending of this era is often quoted as being ‘the death of the album’ by musical critic and journalists. Some prime examples of this are these articles from GnovisJournal and Variety. Both have titles insinuating the aforementioned downfall of albums; both have used Katy Perry’s album ‘Prism’ as an example.
The problem I find with the many articles presenting themselves as the harbingers of the musical end times, is that they will always use a mainstream pop album as an example. In my experience people are less likely to want to listen to an entire album of an artist whose most well received tracks will receive massive amounts of radio playtime and therefore be already well known. This removes the need to purchase an entire album especially when it is not the only way to listen to it. Another argument I would present against the use of a pop stars 10th album as a representation of the entire music industry is that listeners, as a collective, have moved away from the mainstream. The mere fact that genres such as aussietronica and medieval rock exist is a testament to this. The music hobbyists of today do not want to listen to Katy Perry sing about having her heartbroken for the 30th time when they could be listening to songs or perhaps albums of a genre which they can relate too.
One of the main factors cited in the downfall of the album era is the advent of online streaming services like Spotify and iTunes. These services gained popularity alongside the rise in smartphone use and because of this have become ingrained in popular culture. A big feature of these sites is that they allow you to buy a single song rather than an entire album, which has lead to a lot of artists releasing a couple of singles rather than an EP for example. By reducing the amount of songs they are releasing, as well as increasing the time between releases, artists are able to increase the amount of time they spend on each song. The fact that listeners can pick and choose exactly what songs they want to listen to has not stopped musicians creating albums, in fact it has done quite the opposite. Spotify, which was founded in 2006 and has over 180 million users, allows anybody to add their songs onto the service and even earn royalties. Because of this it is possible to listen to music from all around the world instantly. This has meant that a lot of artists that may have never been noticed otherwise have been able to find success.
Spotify is also relatively cheap to use, with a monthly cost of around $15 NZD you can download and listen to as many songs as you want, which compared to the cost of buying all of the albums from artists you like is comparatively small. So overall I would say that as not only the time artists have to make songs has increased but also the amount of songs has been increased the quality of music on offer has also snowballed to an amazing point. I also think that a major part of the mentality of a musician trying to achieve fame is that they must have a critically acclaimed album. Therefore it is not uncommon for an artist to have a breakthrough single that they will quickly follow with an album with the intent of continuing their success. An excellent example of this is the young rapper Post Malone, who released his first song to Youtube on the 19th of July 2015 to a massive reception. Post quickly followed this with his album ‘Stoney’ which debuted at number six on the US Billboard 200.
I believe that even though it is often claimed by the media that the time of the album is over, the use of albums will continue at least for the foreseeable future even if the way artists use them has changed. This is reinforced by artists such as Post Malone as well as the wide variety of genres that exist today. Streaming services such as Spotify and iTunes also help to perpetuate the use of albums by artists all over the world.
