Evolution of music sales: 1. Pay a lot 2. Pay a little 3. Pay anything 4. OK fine, just pay once a month 5. Fuck you, now you own a U2 album
— Dan Wineman (@dwineman) September 11, 2014
I couldn't even imagine buying an album anymore, or even downloading a single of my favorite song of the moment for .99 cents. I have listened to more artists and delved deep into more genres than in the past couple years than I have in my entire life thanks to a Spotify Premium account, all for roughly half the cost of a single compact disk per month. What Spotify doesn't have (which isn't terribly much that isn't far out) is free on Youtube. I've also gone to more live shows than I have since pretty much my teens/20's, pretty much because I've just been exposed to more artists via the endless buffet, and some of them have ended up coming through town. 1. Listen for nearly free 2. Buy ticket to live show 3. Buy a tee shirt if it's rad That's how artists get my cash now.
I recognize that I'm a fossil, but I remain very much an album-driven consumer. If I hear a song I will buy (or download, depending) the album simply because I find most singles off albums do not represent the best work of that artist. I've also consistently had miserable results with Spotify, Grooveshark, whatever. If I want to show someone new music, it's never on any of those services. Maybe that makes me a crazy outlier or something, but the only service that has my music is Google and that's only because I put it there. I was trying to get a friend to play a few tracks from Google's vast collection and they had none of it. I give Drip.fm $15 a month and don't feel even vaguely bad. I used to give emusic $12 a month until they traded all of their indie labels for access to Sony... that was about the time everyone stopped giving a shit about eMusic. I think Lefsetz is right: it's gonna be about small bands that can hustle. I have no problems knowing that the bands I listen to will never play anything bigger than a genre festival.
I'm with you. Just picked up a handful of albums and I'm (surprisingly) loving everyone of them. Not every track in great but there are many tracks I wouldn't have gotten into if I had just bought the song that got me interested. It's not new music that I'm missing from the services, it's mostly older albums that I can't find, probably just 10% of the time but that 10% is enough for me to feed at a different trough.
Back in the day (which, I can't quite say) I imagined an album was to a single as a novel was to a short story; an interconnected set of smaller movements thematically arranged into a longer work greater than the sum of its parts. Singles felt like a little fragment of the whole thrown out into the world in order to tempt the audience to engage with the musicians' larger vision. Not all of them, of course, but the ones that stay with me. Then again I sat through Tubular Bells and Animals and a few other albums that didn't even bother with track breaks, so I'm probably an outlier too.
I remember thinking that I didnt really like music because listening to a new album my friends recommended required multiple forced plays before I could really stomach it. I thought I had some kind of anti music tolerance that prevented me from appreciating tracks as quickly as others. Turns out I have an eclectic taste, rarely finding an artist who I like enough to listen to several of their tracks. Its more of a pick and mix from all sorts. I still think I don't really 'get' music as much as others though, I could easily live without it...And that sucks if you’re an artist who thinks they need forty minutes to make a statement, if you make music that must be listened to forty times to get it. I’ll be honest, in the seventies I came to like so much stuff because of radio repetition. I can’t believe[sic] all of that stuff was great. But today, no one is subjected to that level of repetition.
Wow, that's crazy that there's been no platinum albums this year. Do most people really only use their streaming service of choice to play a string of singles though? I use Google Play Music and generally play whole albums at a time. Mainly cos I see them as ready-made playlists and I never really get around to curating my own playlists.
If anyone wants a lot of great music for free, then check this website out: