The Death of the Album

Most people have said that it's coming. I think that iTunes really helped the process along, but the music industry market has really shifted towards the single. But unfortunately they're still stuck with the album format, and haven't done anything to change it.

Here's what I'm talking about: an artist will release an album roughly every two to three years. The majority of that time in between is spent touring or in the studio making the next album. This works great for major labels that can drum up hype for the album of an established artist and make a killing off of it. They don't need more material to gain support or to make money.

The strange thing is that indie labels have decided that they need to follow the same format. Why?

I think one of the hardest thing a newly formed band performing new music is to make the music they're playing memorable and sell records. (Duh?) This involves creating an album the first time out that is good enough to be picked up by a major record label. This is quite hard. (Again, duh?)

The other hard part is that once you release an album any potential fans that discover you don't hear anything new for a long time while you tour, and ultimately loose interest if they can't go and see a show. Those that can see you hear the same old stuff, nothing new.



In a day where we all have Myspace pages for our music, there's no reason why a band can't roll out songs over a longer period of time rather than all at once. This means just releasing singles at first, maybe in groups of two or three. That way your audience doesn't have to sift through what they (and maybe even you) think is inferior material to get to the really good stuff.

Here's some benefits:

• There's a constant interest in the band, and people don't forget about you, especially with those who can't see you live. 
• It also allows you more control of the quality of your music. When you're working on an album there's just so much material to cover and some tracks are bound to get pushed onto the back burner. You need quality over quantity when starting out. This way you can produce good material while retaining the image that there's a fair amount to listen to.
• Starting a band to be financially successful involves marketing, and the more viral you can be, the better. What are you marketing? Music, which is your product. Like any good product, people like something "new" rather than the same old stuff. The more new material you can put out, the more successful you can be (of course, you're product actually has to be good).

So if you're starting a new band, don't rely on the album to get you started. If you do record an album, record a live one. That way you can get even more support for your live show, which is going to be your primary money maker at first.