[...] samples in any form is to have an open, but defensive mind, and question not only the music, but how it is consumed.  Who are the artist’s influences?  Who is sampled, deliberately or unconsciously?  [...]

Alex, while I disagree with some of what you said, I agree with the main point/conclusion you draw: a big win for music in the digital age will come when snackable music becomes as satisfying as a full meal.

Now, agreement and kudos (while well-deserved) is rarely as fun/thought-provoking as disagreement. So here's a few snack-size morsels from me:

– with effective filters (the Hype Machine, music blogs, Last.fm, Girl Talk) able to custom-separate one's musical wheat from one's musical chaff, does the future of the album lie in the hands of artists, filters, individuals, or someone else?
– regardless of your answer to the above, where SHOULD it lie, ideally?

– is the split as hard-and-fast as you make it seem? I would say that there are ideal times for full albums and others for individual tracks (for example, open road driving vs. city driving)

– due to the abundance of and ease to find quality music, could we have reached a point where “sweet tracks” are now a commodity, traded in a reputation economy where it costs little to buy in though the sale is incredibly valuable?

Further thinking points, I guess. I definitely don't have a coherent answer yet; I'd love to see what you have to say!

anulman added these pithy words on Jun 24 09 at 6:16 pm

There is no way to duplicate the long-form experience of the album in bite-size chunks. A minimum time investment is required in order to truly experience and appreciate any work of art (unless you're on drugs). It's a process. It requires reflection. You gotta marinate in it.

People may not be as willing or apt to do this anymore (which I think is your point), but there is simply no short-cut to the full-out emotional experience of listening to Dark Side of the Moon or Abbey Road in their entirety, just as there are no short-cuts for getting lost in a truly good novel, or a truly good film. Whether we're dealing with words, sounds, images, or a combination of these things, we're talking about storytelling, and the album is (or at least can be) the music equivalent of the story.

The “hunt” for a replacement to the album speaks to larger societal issues. We're never happy with what we have. Someone always has to have a cool new way to experience something. And it's not just art, it's almost anything in life. But taking an escalator to the top of a mountain doesn't adequately replace climbing it, just like watching porn and whacking it for two minutes replace hours of epic sex. Life doesn't come with Cliff Notes. It's about the journey, and there comes a point where it can't get any shorter. It simply takes time. Shorter and shorter attention spans result in less and less emotional satisfaction.

This doesn't mean that the album won't become irrelevant in the future, at least from a business/marketing perspective. Consumers will continue to stop buying albums, and maybe musicians will even stop making them. Musicians will give their music away for free on their web sites, one song at a time, and no one will ever again know the jubilant experience of removing that annoying plastic wrapper from the brand new CD they just bought at Sam Goody. (Perhaps the plastic wrapper on CDs is a metaphor for life….how stoner deep do you want me to get?) Clearly we're hunting for something, but if we're talking about a strictly audio-based experience, we will not find an adequate artistic replacement to the album.

Alex, I know you have impeccable taste in music, but if you’re jumping from artist to artist, maybe the artists aren’t that good. Increased quantity and distribution enables more crap to be easily available amongst the good stuff.

Even in an attention deficit world, though, the stuff that matters, the truly good stuff, seems to find a way in becoming a permanent part of your life. For me, this happens with 5-10 albums per year. Most recently it's been Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest. And because of our attention deficit world, the satisfaction I've received from this album has been augmented by the fact that I can go watch the music video for “Two Weeks” on YouTube and follow @EdwardDroste on Twitter.

But reading Ed Droste's Tweets and finding out that he thinks San Francisco was a great place to end the tour is relatively meaningless. I could care less. What's most important to me is that I love the new Grizzly Bear album, and there is no replacement for listening to it start-to-finish. It's that simple. “Snackable music” is bullshit.

Chris McKenna added these pithy words on Jun 25 09 at 1:53 pm

I have come to think of the album as equal parts creation and curation. After all, the album is simply a set of songs arranged in a specific order, perhaps with coherence in mind, perhaps with the intent to juxtapose different sounds and styles, but almost always with a story to tell. And isn't this what djs do too? Well, to be fair, the very best djs take two songs and make three, but at its heart mixing derives from that same notion of curation. It's the idea of selecting two songs and placing them side-by-side, using one to inform the other, highlighting common themes or influences, and weaving from them a single thread.

When I purchase an album, I listen to it and nothing else from beginning to end, and repeat it often as many as ten times before moving on. Oh I still give my favorites five stars, that way they end up on my iPhone's favorites playlist for my commute to and from work, but the album remains a sovereign experience for me. I do the same with single-track, hour-long dj mixes, but quickly transition into trainspotting mode after a handful of listens, trying to discern artists and song titles so I can hear the original tracks alone. I rarely buy single songs, but that's more a function of my taste and style, and I realize my habits and hang-ups far from typical.

Hit songs are a singular experience, and thus uniquely set apart from the rest of the artist's contemporaneous work. There's a bit of injustice there, perhaps its glow makes it difficult for the others to shine, but such a situation presents an opportunity too. Chris, I love that you bring up Ed and Grizzly Bear, I too follow him on twitter and actually do care that he loved ending his tour in SF, mostly because I was there for the show, but that's not my point. I have learned about so many new artists from him, and I love the way he so freely shares his passions, but the whole experience on the flip side of his links is a mess.

Point being, I think the market for an artist to make a more thorough musical statement is expanding, but what's missing is a trivial way to turn a small audience of nibblers into connoisseurs and connoisseurs into advocates. Alex likely knows where this is leading, but I am going to leave it at that for now.

scott truitt added these pithy words on Jul 09 09 at 12:16 am

Thanks for the reflection Scott. My only fear is that artists will adapt to
the market, rightfully so, and create music only for micro-listening. There
is nothing wrong with this, as we'll adapt as well, but I think those that
grew up on the long-form album will miss the feeling as a whole.

alexjmann added these pithy words on Jul 09 09 at 10:19 am