Playlists

I've been meaning to write a bit about the massive rehearsal and recording sessions with Potential Falcon that I recently finished, but, as usual, I got distracted.

And then, today, I noticed this little comment in the middle of an article on Coolfer, about the future of the album as a format. While Coolfer argues that the album is still the main format in which people purchase music, he got a reply from Aram Sinnreich, of the Wall Street Journal, that I though was kind of interesting.

Aram says that "neither the single nor the album product format adequately addresses the way today's music fans are actually listening.

The new dominant consumption format is the playlist. Only business models that address this behavior -- such as online radio, subscriptions, and ISP taxes -- will take full advantage of consumers' rapidly expanding tastes. The album -- ten songs by a single artist in a fixed order -- just doesn't cut it in this context. "

Whether or not this is true is something I won't pretend to know: people keep making various predictions about "where the industry is headed", and it's impossible to tell who's going to turn out to be right.

But it puts the artist in an interesting position.

As Coolfer points out, it suits both the listener and musician to bundle groups of songs together into an album: it's more economical for both parties, for one.

Also, most artists are at least slightly uncomfortable about just releasing "single songs" and no "album songs". For some this may be a way of covering up their mediocre song-writing abilities, but it is still a genuine concern. Writing a single that will be attractive to radio stations is a useful skill, but it would get tiring to try to make all of your songs fit that mould. Some bands made an art of the single, like, obviously, The Beatles, but for most bands some of their best songs aren't "single songs".

This may simply be because, if you like the work by any one musician, the songs you'll end up loving the most may often be the ones that don't get thrashed to death on the radio. But it's also because if you listen to an album 100 times, the catchiness of a single stops being as much of a great feature, as you come to appreciate the other elements in the music.


So, what about playlists? In some sense, it's like the problems with singles all over again: if musicians suddenly have their music bundled with other bands as the primary format, then won't they just need to write catchy singles and ditch all their other, possibly experimental stuff? That's the obvious answer, but not necessarily the only one.

If a musician was able to play it right, they could use the playlist format as a way to explore more diverse musical styles. An album usually has to have some sort of unifying structure, or it doesn't really work as an album. A performing artist often gets expected to put out some sort of similar product each time round, as this makes both record labels and most fans happy.

But if your primary format for putting out music was the playlist, couldn't you potentially write all manner of songs and find different playlists that would accommodate them? There's always going to be someone who wants to listen to that 10 minute jam piece (if it's good), and they might be someone who wouldn't otherwise buy your album, full as it is of 3 minute pop songs.

I'm still skeptical about the whole idea, but hey, I'm just thinking out loud (but not really, because I'm not talking while I'm writing).