I don't really have my finger on the pulse of most of this, so I don't have anything to add to everything you said. But I am curious about your statement regarding albums:
It is incredibly rare to see an Album anymore because people don't listen to music as albums. They listen to them as singles in a playlist.
What genre are you listening to, where artists used to come out with albums but aren't anymore? As a listener of all kinds of music, like rock, metal, blues, kpop, reggaeton, EDM, country and many other genres, that has not been my experience at all.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Music is released in album format in the sense of being a playlist that might get sold as a vinyl at a show. It is incredibly rare to be released as a curated listening experience. The idea that you listen to the music, in album order, and have a story told to you. One of love and loss or of making it past an infidelity or of murdering your brother in the hopes of waking up a subjugated populace and so forth.
Plenty of musicians have talked about it and it is a very common talking point on the music side of things. I think Hayley Williams’s shadow dropped album (that was part of a hair product line or something?) is being widely praised as an Album? I dunno, I love her but I’ve been too busy to sit down and listen. Which… is also a big part of the problem.
riot@fedia.io 1 day ago
I really can't see where you're coming from. I'm discovering and listening to loads of new albums every couple of months. Spotify is even pushing albums with their "pre-save" feature, where artists start a countdown for their album that's about to drop, and you 'pre-save' it to your library, so you get a notification and have instant access, once the album drops.
Your specific point about Hayley Williams also doesn't make sense to me. I haven't listened to much of her music, since it wasn't really my cup of tea, but I have family members who love her music, and look forward to every album of hers.
I agree that singles are more important than ever in a marketing sense, and that there are probably some artists that focus more on putting those out, than creating albums. But to say that albums are incredible rare is just straight up untrue in my experience. Plenty of artists are still making thematic albums and/or albums that tell a story.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I think you still very much don’t understand the distinction between a music set (an “album”) and a curated set of songs to tell a story (an “Album”).
There are a LOT of things to complain about but frigging Beyonce talked about this… a decade or so ago. And plenty of other musicians and “music industry” people have made the same sentiments.
Are there still some Albums? Of course. But they are a tiny fraction of what is actually created for reasons very much tied towards streaming music services, attention spans, and so forth.
So you can either continue to not be able to see how this is a statement and continue arguing against it. Or you can actually do some googling and look at this as a greater discussion point. Up to you.
riot@fedia.io 13 hours ago
Me not agreeing with you is not arguing against you. I'm only talking from my own experience, and not insisting that what I'm experiencing is the absolute objective truth. At no point did I say you were wrong or that what you're saying doesn't exist. Just that I can't make sense of your viewpoint. Anyway. this is it for me. Have a good one.