Bob Lefsetz: The Album doesn't work anymore

Pop music has always been about the Single.

And the best have always mixed in Singles and B-Sides with their LP and EP work.

Daft Punk and Arcade Fire both had pretty huge LPs this year, and they advanced both with Singles and other AV material to drum up the hype machine.

I don't see anything revolutionary or paradigm changing about that.

I totally disagree. There are still plenty of artists making fantastic albums. Using Katy Perry to make the point is foolish at best. There have always been Katy Perry artists churning out a series of hooks. There have also always been serious music fans that buy albums and attend concerts to keep the real artists in work.

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Its all about the single.

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There have only been flirtations with the album format in pop music, anyway.

Even in rock it was all about the single until the mid-60s - heck "Pet Sounds" was probably the first really well thought out rock album that was marketed, promoted and sold as such. Up until that time, it was bundled singles. Until The Beach Boys, Beatles, Who, Stones, et al, started producing albums as concepts, which transitioned to the 1970s, when rock music became about the album, led primarily by Led Zeppelin. That continued until the mid 1990s - since then, even rock music has drifted back to more of a singles oriented market.

Part of the problem is that very few acts out there are any good at all, and even the good acts have a difficult time producing an entire album worth listening to.

Here's my challenge - go back and listen to Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" - remind yourself that this was an individual album, not a greatest hits package.

Ditto for Def Leppard's "Hysteria", Beatle's "Abbey Road", Led Zeppelin's "Runes/ZOSO/IV", Boston's "Boston" or any of 100s of great albums during the period from 1965 to 1995.

A lot of those albums have more great songs than are produced in a year or two in the 21st Century.

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There's plenty of great albums coming out every year if you look outside of the mainstream.

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I've heard this my whole life. Every 3 or 4 years I hear something out of the mainstream and think, "Hey, that's not bad."

Every 3 or 4 years at the most.

IMO the problem is that older bands are too stuck in their old ways, and haven't adapted to the current business model. true, the typical heritage act isn't gonna go platnium anymore....but if they were willing to evolve with the times (as opposed to blaming everything on illegal downloads), the effort of recording a new album might be a worthwhile endeavor & actually net more change in their pockets. many of the newer bands "get" it & aren't holding their hands out for some major label to swoop in & save the day, unlike the older acts....

Using kickstarter and indie gogo as your "label" has been proven to be very successful for many bands.