Muse

[john]

Hey

Ok, another band on the "revolutionising the music industry" bandwagon? Muse are ditching the album format in favor of a more single based approach. Considering you can buy all songs as individual songs on services like itunes, it does seem a rather empty statement. More gentle evolution that startling revolution.

Muse, though talented, have seemed inspired by Radiohead in several ways. After Radiohead's recent "experiment" with online sales, it does seem a bit.... wannabe.

Maybe it's just me.

Cheers

John

[KennyChaffin]

Yeah, seems kind of like jumping on the bandwagon rather than being innovative.

I guess the bigger issue to me is where is this going and why?

Need to look at the past, the reason Albums exist, why were they packaged the way they were and does it serve any purpose in todays, or our future means of distributing and selling music?

I'm not sure of the full history, but I know there were 78's that were relatively long playing and with multiple songs etc. In the 50's or so we began to see 45's - singles and flip/B sides that were most likely to address the market that wanted to buy the song because they heard it on top40 radio. Then either simultaneously or shortly there-after were LPs - 33-1/3 Albums with a collection of songs.

CDs followed which were really just LPs in a different format. There were also CD singles - same media but less data.

Now we have on-line music - itunes and other on-line purchase/download sales.

What does it all mean? Hell I don't know. Seems to me bands and songwriters typically write songs. Those songs get packaged together as a album for sales purposes (more bang for your buck?) but it seems increasingly that when this is the process there may only be one or two songs worth buying on the album and a 8 or 10 krap songs.

Some bands or songwriters will do concept albums which are a bit different creature in that the individual songs fit together to make something bigger from the sum of it's parts. These however seem fewer these days.

Will the ability to purchase individual songs give us better music and less krap? or more?

Do songwriters/bands write songs just to fill up the album? Will they continue to?

Will the public begin to buy individual songs only?

Walmart or WholeFoods?

KAC

[typo]

bandwagon i reckon

[thelevellers]

It's not just following Radiohead, Ash have stopped doing albums too (tho before both Radiohead or Muse)... It does kinda make sense for everyone not doing concept albums to a degree... It would make me buy a single for the first time ever if that's the only way to get the music, but personally I would prefer a well thought out album...

I think it will save some resources overall, as one hit wonder bands/artists will have exactly that - with not padded out album of mostly rubbish accompanying it!!

I think that maybe it is a bit of a bandwagon, but the bandwagon makes sense, so fair play really...