Is the album dead? An article in Ars Technica suggests many artists believe it is dying, and the biggest culprit behind its demise is iTunes.

Some bands sort of have this coming. They make one or two good songs and then fill in the rest of the album with a string of throwaways. But for other band that strive to create a complete and cohesive album, they are feeling somewhat annoyed by the change in habits.

Apple doesn’t allow artists to sell albums only on their system. An artist can sell all their songs, but not as one package–it has to be a la carte.

One artist (okay, “artist” may not be the right term) who noticed this is Kid Rock. He decided not to sell his album on iTunes. The result? He sold 1.7 million albums and sales have been steady. If he had offered up the record on iTunes, a lot of users would like have chosen to download only his hit song, All Summer Long. Kid Rock isn’t the only one: AC/DC doesn’t use iTunes and sold nearly 3 million records last year, and Jay-Z has also banned them, equating selling music on iTunes to selling a movie “scene-by-scene.”

Most definitely, a lot of the pressure against iTunes is coming from record industry executives, looking for a scapegoat to explain falling sales and an outdated sales model. The money that the record industry wastes and robs artists of is more significant than any loss the artist accrue from iTunes users only buying one song at a time. Restricting access is never the answer, and will more likely than not lead to the utilization of P2P networks.

That said, I find my appreciation for music starts with a couple of songs I like off an album but grows over time as I become more familiar with the rest of the songs. It’s kind of sad that album is becoming a less respected medium because many artists do put in a lot of time and effort into creating a cohesive vision. I mean, who would just want to get “Money” off of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon? It’s ridiculous, and semi-depressing.

But, then again, nobody is stopping anybody from not buying the whole album on iTunes, so if artists do create a good one, reviewers and word of mouth will win out in the end.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 5:02 pmand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.