The inevitable death of the Album?

I've noticed this for a while, and maybe a lot of other people have to, but when I check other people's playlists on last.fm they seem to just have their music players on random. Actually, I also notice sometimes that they have them on repeat as well, but what's missing here is playing through an album. Now there are a couple of factors at play here that explain why people are straying from the album format. First of all, having a music player on random is essentially a personal radio station. And/or maybe this is part of a general movement away from the album format and back to the single format.

I can attest to how nice it is to surrender all decision making responsibilities to the algorithms of a software program. Plus there are the little surprises you get from having a song you haven't heard for a while come up. But what is lost when people ignore the album is the sense of continuity that is sometimes (not often enough if you ask me) at the heart of a record. You are basically eschewing the band's choice of songs and song order and handing the power to a cold digital process by which your playlist is chosen.

On the topic of a general return to the dominance of the single, we don't have the mp3 player to fault but instead the downloading software, especially those that specialize in individual songs. That basically exempts the vast majority of bittorrent downloads. Whether you get your music from a free p2p program or through a pay by the download one, you can cut through the flab of worthless, forgettable songs that occasionally characterize the space between singles on countless albums (most of which are of course single-focused for the sake of radio airplay to begin with). This is why I was absolutely baffled when Christina Aguilera released a double album recently. It will inevitably have more throwaway songs and be a waste of money for her and her label since so many more people can buy only the singles at a tiny fraction of the album's cost. I could care less about what kind of money Christina Aguilera and her backers make, but what I'm truly worried about is that this practice of downloading only fragments of an album might spill over into more album friendly (frequently indie)genres and begin to trivialize those types of albums as well.

With both factors at play, the album format might not have (as much of) a prominent role in how people listen to music in the coming years.

Are you with me or what?

So who here is tired and bored of Pitchfork? I've been reading it regularly, probably about once a day give or take the occasional disruption in access to the internet for the last 3 1/2 years. I guess the basic jist of it has remained fairly solid - good reviews, news, etc. of independent music and anything else in music that's noteworthy, but Pitchfork has increasingly taken on this persona of trying to be your absurdly sarcastic and literate friend. Let's take the example of yesterday's review of the new Basement Jaxx single "Hush Boy". The first sentence is solid: great! an amusing analogy about how there was bound to be a day we wouldn't like the first single to a Basement Jaxx record. Then astonishingly they carry out the analogy, which is actually about a relationship, breakup, and a freaky related dream, for an entire two paragraphs.

I only read the whole thing out of astonishment and also so I could see what kind of wreckage would result from all this. Trust me, I was not disappointed. The punchline included a dream where your girlfriend breaks open like a shell only to reveal "the head of Dikembe Mutombo who yelps, 'if you want me for your girlfriend!'" Really, who even know who the hell Dikembe Mutombo is? I do only because I grew up around Philadelphia where Mutombo played when I was young and still a fan of the Sixers, but what person today reading Pitchfork without that same connection would know who he is? Nonetheless, the analogy is fucking ridiculous. I agree with the review, but when did music criticism become a half-baked exercise in creative writing?

But Pitchfork wasn't always like this. I remember checking out a review of the Jeff Buckley album "Grace" from 1996 when Pitchfork was still in its infancy and didn't have the digital clout that it has today. After reading it, I was surprised to find out how short the review actually was - maybe only 1 or 2 paragraphs. That's how much text they devote to a single track review nowadays; and remember, "Grace" was a seriously respected album back when it came out 10 years ago probably meriting some serious commentary.

Although my frustration with Pitchfork goes well beyond this, reading the Basement Jaxx review made it oh so clear.