

Radiohead Says No More Albums - jnorthrop
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/12/radiohead-says-no-more-albums/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

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jrschulz
[Disclaimer: I am a big fan of Radiohead and at the same time listen to music
almost exclusively album-for-album. No shuffle play for me, thanks.]

I seriously hope that they at least always release a couple of tracks
together. Whether they call that an "album" doesn't matter to me.

I fail to imagine myself to buy a new song every couple of weeks and listen to
each of them separately. Am I supposed to listen to new music for just four
minutes and then skip to something else?

Complex, good music (which, for me, includes that of Radiohead) deserves
attention. You cannot build up attention in such a short amount of time. An
album is more tan a collection of songs. Every song not only stands for itself
but also serves as a frame for all other songs.

If I had a short attention span, I would listen to the radio. (Ok, I actually
_do_ have a short attention span, but well...)

~~~
pmorici
Many of Charles Dickens's books were originally released one chapter at a time
just because Radiohead releases songs as singletons doesn't mean you can't put
them together to make something greater than the parts.

~~~
jerf
That's not the question; the question is whether those parts will form a
greater whole.

I'm not the original poster, so I speak only for myself. Some of my "albums"
(read: CDs) are just collections of songs, and that's fine. But some of the
albums have coherency, stylistic similarities that don't just come from the
artist (as other albums from the same artist will have different stylistic
similarities in those songs), and other things that make these albums a bit
more than just the sum of their parts. This doesn't just include the "concept
albums", but even things that may sound like "just a collection of songs" at
first but turn out to have a flow and coherency once you think about it.

If nothing else, there's an art to album arrangement. Like good editing, it
might be easier to see if I gave an example of a very degenerate case than if
I try to say what's good: If you release 6 happy songs and 6 sad songs, you
don't want them to show up in that order, as that makes for a terrible break
in the flow (it'll feel like two albums glued together); you want to mix them
together, and even with the same 12 songs, the tone of the album can be
somewhat manipulated just by the order of the songs. (Start and end on happy?
Start and end on sad? etc.)

It's not just a matter of "my choice"; there's a matter of the artist's choice
as well. This is a very fuzzy thing and it is perfectly possible to create a
"mix album" with a bit of work that is itself a bit more than the sum of its
parts, but there's still something to be said for an artist doing this
deliberately.

(Besides, call me old-fashioned but I think that there's still a place for the
concept album. The short form gets mined out easily, especially in the context
of a single artist; giving a bigger canvas to a skilled artist can produce
something genuinely different.)

I hope that people continue to produce albums and not just single, isolated
tracks. (Of course, albums too could be serialized. And maybe that's all you
meant, but I still wanted to point out this could be a problem in this bright
new era. I'm not prone to complaining about new media but this is one place we
could genuinely lose an entire art form, not just be quibbling about the smell
of the book or something else that nobody under the age of 10 will ever miss
in the future (my personal metric of fuddy-duddy-ness when it comes to
complaining about new media).)

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notirk
I have been thinking for a while that it was only a matter of time until bands
started moving towards recording and publishing a fewer number of songs at a
time due to digital sales. Albums make sense when you have to press a physical
medium and distribute it across the country/world, not so much with a purely
digital distribution.

The making of individual tracks also works well with pop music and its
mentality, actually, it makes tons of sense, cutting costs by only writing and
recording a few songs and spoon feeding it to the radio stations and the
general public. The move away from albums is a total shame from an artistic
view point. You'd never end up with masterpiece albums like "Dark Side of the
Moon" with bands recording a few tracks at a time. I also connect so much of a
band and their era's by albums too. Metallica and their change with the black
album and everything after that. Even when I download new music today, I
acquire full albums to hear everything else the band has made. I'm not looking
forward to the day it's mostly individual tracks!

~~~
mrshoe
Radiohead has proven to be ahead of the curve in the music industry, yet
frankly I'm surprised to see this coming from a "real band" first.

Pop artists generally pay big name producers for 2 to 3 tracks per album,
which they plan on releasing as singles. The rest of the tracks are more or
less filler so they can justify charging $15 for a long play album.

With digital distribution becoming more popular and consumers buying more
singles instead of full albums, I thought pop artists would be the first to
stop releasing full-length albums. I guess this is just another example of the
music industry being unable or unwilling to adapt to the changing landscape.

I really do hope, though, as you mentioned, that real musicians continue to
put in the creativity and hard work it takes to produce full albums. The
result is just far better than a collection of singles.

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dschobel
The quote three lines in from Yorke is: _“None of us want to go into that
creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off,”_

which doesn't strike me as sharing the finality of the story's title.

~~~
rms
Right, the media always does this. They aren't going to come out with an album
_for the current release cycle_. Next release cycle 5 years from now, sure.

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sgoranson
That kinda bums me out to hear. I know Radiohead's m.o. lately is
revolutionizing the process of music production, and maybe they think albums
are a relic of the old regime and passe or something. But can you really
imagine if OK Computer was released one iTunes download at a time? yuck.

~~~
SwellJoe
_The Bends_ (which, I've always felt is their best album overall) would work
pretty well in a singles model, though it is even better taken as a whole.

I think it's worth realizing that the "album" concept came about _because_ of
technological changes...and the singles model is coming back, again, because
of technology. I also don't think most songwriters can really deliver an
album, in the grand sense of the word. I think the list of truly great whole
albums is shockingly short. There are only a few people on earth that can
deliver an album of the caliber of _Dark Side of the Moon_ , _Abbey Road_ ,
_Rumors_ , _London Calling_ , etc. Most of even the best selling bands of all
time would have served their customers better by providing a few great singles
at a fair price. Journey, for example. Great bunch of very successful singles
over a long career...but even their best album is at least half filler, and
none of their albums are better appreciated as a whole ( _Don't Stop
Believing_ is not improved by being heard with the surrounding tracks on
_Escape_ ).

Bands that want to make long cohesive concept pieces are more free than ever
to do so; the cost of album production is lower than ever, and the
distribution costs have reached approximately zero. Their customers are also
more free than ever to say, "$12 for 15 songs is too steep. But I'll give you
a buck each for those two really good songs." The casual listener has a chance
to take part and support artists in ways they may not have in the past, while
the artist and dedicated fans can _still_ choose big productions and long-form
recordings (and pay more for that experience).

These are good times for music, both artists and fans. The recording industry,
on the other hand, is approaching a long-deserved reckoning.

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dzlobin
I've got to come clean, I feel like I'm the only person who never enjoyed
radiohead. I like a grand total of two songs.

~~~
edb
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and I have respect for yours. That
being said, the idea of anyone not being able to enjoy radiohead makes me sad.
Give them another try! :)

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flipbrad
A bit like 'pay what you want' - this is a band that has the prior cred and
prior revenue to experiment pretty much however they damn well please.

Other threads around me point out the cons: albums are cornerstones of
artists' careers, fantastic creative canvases, and so on.

But in a future when we're streaming, not owning, our music, and where the
album is already dead (unpackaged by iTunes), there is arguably a future where
music is released as a steady, no-rush stream of quality tracks that then get
remixed and mashed up by listeners, and placed into the totally unique and
possibly _more_ meaningful context of the user's own playlists ("albums").
Like fanfic circulating around publishing, people will put together and share
suggested album-like playlists anyway, perhaps even giving them their own
'album titles'. Wisdom of the crowd principle suggests these might be even
better ordered and contextualised and thus increase the popularity of the
tracks within to broadened audience, driving 'airplay' and perhaps ownership

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robryan
Maybe the reason album sales are out of line with singles in growth/ decline
because bands are cutting corners and releasing albums with a couple of good
songs and a load of average stuff just to get to album size.

Given the relative low payoff from making an album these days I think some
bands would be better served making new music bit by bit between tours rather
than trying to push out an album every year. It usually gets to the point with
a good band after about 2 or 3 albums that they don't have time to play
everything you want to hear at a concert anyway so slower production of songs
isn't an issue in that reguard.

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H__N
Try Gustav Mahler's Symphony No 9 if you like long complex music. 4 parts 30
min 16 min 14 min and the forth at 28 min. The Adagio is good.

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tamas
Interestingly, they announced this after releasing an album on the Internet.
Nine Inch Nails also announced their farewell tour after doing online
release[s] (1 regular album, and a 4 CD instrumental, collaborative set).
Maybe it's a sign of really getting tired of the "music business" when a well
established band starts doing online releases?

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joebottherobot
It was really sad to hear this. Radiohead albums tend to be greater than the
sum of their individual tracks.

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rokhayakebe
Agile Album Development.

------
beamso
Billy Corgan has said the same thing about upcoming Smashing Pumpkins
releases. Only singles and EPs after Zeitgeist (hence American Gothic and
G.L.O.W).

