I really enjoy listening to albums, and never were a big fan of playlists. It must have something to do with the fact I was a teen in the 90’s, and at this this time you had to commit to an album even before you buy and listen to it.
I’d say , let’s ignore trends. The music I make ( nothing yet released ) is usually 5 to 8 minutes long. I even find it’s a challenge for me to make something under 3 minutes.
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With machines, music is almost moreso something one curates, or in some senses grows. You sort of sculpt a direction of pattern and timbre, into a direction you find agreeable. This is very different from learning a musical instrument like a trumpet or drum kit or guitar, which can take years to master before you get any good sounds out of it. A box you simply turn the power on becomes more about the way you shape it, and mix it in with other things, than it necessarily does about virtuosity - although that can definitely still be part of it.
So my feeling is we live in a sort of musical ‘demoscene’ these days. People are just sort of showing off capabilities, and doing that daily. Almost like a sound journal, rather than sort of disconnecting from everything and working on the big full length release away from public eyes or what have you.
There definitely are kids who make full length records, millions of them in fact. Just because we’re older doesn’t make it irrelevant, we’re basically our parents now who used to talk about Led Zeppelin or the Beatles or whatever.
Kids today would probably find Radiohead woefully irrelevant. Don’t forget we were 15 or whatever when Radiohead came out, today’s teenagers have the exact same thing and we just don’t have our fingers on that pulse (although I know many music heads who do).
When you’re young, you don’t think about this. When I was young vinyl seemed mad old and tapes and cd’s seemed like where it was at. Vinyl will always have an allure I think, but I don’t think kids today have the same disdain for streaming and infinite scroll and soundbytes as the older generation do, they’re in sync with it and they just get on with it and push that envelope.
If anything I think it will push further toward a sharpened version of streaming and scrolling than we’ve ever known, rather than somehow reversing and going backwards to a slower more meatier release style or something.
In the end people can make music in whatever platform and format they choose, but what lingers as the actual critical mass or current trend of what is ‘essential’ or important, I’d look to what 15 year old music heads are into and ask them.
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…the single…is now the focus track…
…the album…is now the playlist…
…linernotes in the digital age…are now only takin’ place in social media accounts…
…84% of ALL music is now “consumed” “enjoyed” “played” via a streaminfarm of ur choice…
…ten bux a month description fee to access all music out there, whenever where ever…
is THE deal of these times…
…fun fact…never ever there was sooo much money in overall music biz…
while never ever the question, where is that all gone?, was that sustainable…
u can’t fight tomorrow…progress takes place, with or without u…
while the user centrified pay model is on it’s way…
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As a form, the album is my preferred musical experience. I don’t get on well with playlists. I never cared much for the music on the radio so I suppose I never got into the habit of letting others pick my music. I grew up with cassettes. More specifically a Walkman with auto-reverse. I enjoy digging in and spending a while in a mood, an experience, with an artist. With the weird music I tend to gravitate to it seems the creators prefer a longer form of expression as well. As an overarching music trend, sure I mourn the loss of the album being the preferred format for musical expression but there are many more impactful things in the world to be mourning right now.
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Regarding the albums versus songs debate… I don’t think it’s any different now than it ever was. To take the Radiohead example above, at the same time you had Timmy Mallet in the charts - I don’t recall Timmy ever releasing a double-gatefold concept LP but I may have missed it.
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Quit Spotify then! Go old school, find an artist you like and check the same label for other gems, let them know you still want albums by buying them. For full disclosure, I hate Spotify with a passion:
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My favorite thing was digging up Pitchfork (back when it was not hipster) and some under the radar blogs, go to Soulseek to get their entire collection, and follow their label for discovering similar artists. It has been becoming increasingly difficult to do that nowadays, when everything is algorithm driven, and underground artists even becoming mainstream in their own sense. I guess I am missing the old times.
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Same. I totally miss the ‘good old days’ of buying albums, reading all the sleeve notes and listening many times over from start to finish because I’d invested my pocket money getting something new. But I guess my point is if we’re not willing to support artists with direct sales and use Spotify playlists and whatnot, then it stands to reason that Spotify and the artists using it (with all the metrics of what ‘works’ and what doesn’t) will only give us throwaway singles from here on out – albums were popular because people bought them in huge numbers and preferred them in many ways. In short, be the change you wish to see in the world.
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…bandcamp remains the best and last record store of the planet…
…while harvesting ur sonic thing via a streamingfarm remains handled with most possible old school music lover care at, yes, it’s sweden, with 12 points again…on spotify.
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45s are singles and were the primary release vessel way back then and albums were mostly collections of singles. Autoplay turntables were made to play a stack of singles. It’s all cycles.
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I know nothing about anything. But fuck songs shorter than 5 minutes long. 
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And how many words in a poem? How many paragraphs in a book?
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spotify is a garbage company run by garbage people.
their first priority is to the customers… not musicians. paying musicians fairly is an after thought… an inconvenience for them and they will never do what’s right for musicians… they’ll only perpetuate a race to the bottom.
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There are rules already established for those formats. I do not know them. But there are. What is your point?
When we ran the family record store back in the early 80’s which was all vinyl and tape we we saying music is finished when the ‘NOW thats what i call Music’ albums kept going to no.1. I think nothings changed. Its been in decline for 40 years.
The point is the opposite: there are no rules, only preferences. You can open or close your mind as much as you’d like.
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There are very much rules.
Playlists are great for gatherings, background music for chores etc. Personally, I don’t throw parties where we all sit and listen intently to an album for 45 minutes then discuss it (kudos if you do, could be a cool book club like idea).
But yea, I like albums.
In dance music land, however, albums are almost always too much of the same. And that was true for myself before streaming was a thing. Streaming is great for DJ mixes which I think we can agree are the bread and butter of the DJ world.
On the other extreme side of things, there are a ton of “jam videos” where you could barely call the audio content a beat let alone a song.
Widespread and accessible music streaming is a relatively new technology so I think the dust has only begun to settle enough to guess what consequences might be permanent.
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Already there is generated music, farmed music, on "curated’ (generated?) playlists that are like the penfield mood organ. Music to chill out to, music to meditate to, music to mow the lawn, music to whack off the alpaca, music to feel shame about that alpaca thing.
Spotify’s end game is to remove artists. To generate music for people to consume as part of some activity. Maybe Eno would be fully into it?
All the big tech companies are trying to drive the cost of content to zero. Ultimately they will AI generate all the content, like the music for proles in Big Brother.
Or sumfink…or not, maybe we swing back around and disintermediate, all music becomes folk music again, no big stars, just a thing people do together, to be together, and pass the time.
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There’s your problem right there. You’re letting the robots tell you what to listen to, stuck in the dopamine/disappointment cycle.
Get on bandcamp, get exploring and enjoy listening music again.
Fuck the robots.
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