Thursday, October 4, 2007

a homeless man's vision of the future

In the new age of downloading music, mp3s, streaming audio and limitless digital radio stations we have to ask ourselves, is the album dead?

In 1965 the Beatles released the album Rubber Soul, which consisted of all original material, no cover songs. As time went on the album took the place of the single. In 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club was released without singles.

Today we can listen to a playlist of all our favorite single songs on shuffle. We can download the best track on Itunes for 99 cents. We no longer have to stomach all of the filler that comes along with the album.

Despite this, I don't think the album as a medium is dead. I find that many artists are putting out entire albums worth of material that is not only listenable but actually improves within the cohesion of the album.

But on the other hand I love listening to a good mix of songs, mostly hits. I suppose what I am trying to say is that for many artists there is no reason to release a full album, but for others it is a necessity.

The nice thing about technology today is that we do not have to universally subscribe to one specific medium, instead we can all enjoy music in the way we want or the way the artist intends.

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