![]() ![]() ![]() A side effect is that instead of just a few events in the album cycle to publicize (the album release plus the singles), there can be many that are spread out throughout the year, and each one is a new promotional opportunity. ![]() Releasing just one song every four to eight weeks (give or take a week or two, depending upon its success) gives the fans a better opportunity to experience each song, keep them happy with continual releases, and make it easier for the label marketing team to work it. Just like in the ‘50s and ‘60s, where an artist had to prove herself with a string of successful singles before given a chance to make a full length release, a variation of that concept can be much more successful today. An album released every two years (or even every year) is totally counter to how social media promotion works today.Ī much more sensible strategy is to use the album as more of a compilation of singles, instead of the end-all event itself. What’s more, it doesn’t even make sense in social media terms either, where a constant flow of content keeps the fanbase energized while providing new opportunities for growth. Still artists and labels insist on making a product that’s increasingly becoming irrelevant to current audiences. While this might have made a convenient apples sort-of to apples data point that made a balance sheet look good, the problem is that it doesn’t reflect the reality of 80 to 90% wasted resources, since most of the songs of an album are ignored both internally by the label’s marketing department, and by potential listeners. Move ahead in time to the present and stream-equivalent albums (or SEA, where 1,500 streams equal one album sale) presents the same dilemma. ![]() Most of the time one or two songs that happen to be from the latest album release were downloaded over and over again, but to label bean counters, that somehow amounted to a purchase of a real album. Track equivalent-albums (or TEA), where 10 downloads equal one album sale, never really represented a true album of 10 songs. The album concept may actually have been over for a lot longer than it seems, since the sales numbers have been propped up artificially since the beginning of the digital age. That’s a lot of wasted effort for so little in return. Even if they do, chances are they’ll only listen to each a few times at most, and in most cases, not at all. Most people that get their music from a streaming service will end up cherry-picking the most visible songs (again, the singles), and will never experience the rest of the album cuts anyway. The fact of the matter is that in this Music 4.0 world we now live in, is there even a reason for an artist to automatically make an album without considering some other alternatives first?Īlbums are expensive and time consuming to make and, for the most part, amount to a lot of wasted effort as consumers only listen to one or two songs (the singles) anyway even if they buy the album. Vinyl sales increased by 11.5% but with just 5.6 million sales, it's hardly anything to write home about. Digital album sales saw the sharpest decline with a 18.4% drop while CD sales lowered by 11.6%. According to the Nielsen Music mid-year report, album sales (including CDs cassettes, vinyl LPs and digital albums) have fallen by 13.6% this year but even more worrisome is the fact that albums by current artists aren’t catching on, falling by 20.8%. ![]()
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