Are albums still relevant?

[Travellin' Man]

I'm listening to The Chronic right now and thinking to myself, "this album still suppose to be the bench mark for making a great album"
But then the more I think about it, how many cats take the time to make sure they build a great album anymore?
Today's era is more about catchy singles
Besides, everybody and they mama making they own playlist n shyt.
Are albums really still relevant and if they ain't, when did this change?

 

[Living Bait]

yeh its a shame, but i dont think people craft albums to be listened from start to finish like they used to.....

they know most people now just tend to have playlists and hand pick tunes from different artists....

i miss the old days

 

[Travellin' Man]

yeh its a shame, but i dont think people craft albums to be listened from start to finish like they used to.....

they know most people now just tend to have playlists and hand pick tunes from different artists....

i miss the old days

Yeah.
Cause look at an album like Kanye's The Life of Pablo.
The songs' sequencing are all over the place.
But Kanye and his crew knowing the ear of today's generation, probably already knew people ain't listening to albums like that
They just put a bunch of songs scrambled together and then left it up to the fans to them make their own playlist as they see it.
I'm still stuck in the days of the "album", where it followed a sound, a sonic sound along with a theme, sequence and all that.

 

[Travellin' Man]

I don't even think cats do skits anymore.
*Listening to "The 20 Dollar Pyramid" as I type this*

 

[JustCKing]

They are still relevant to artists who debuted in the 90's and the early 00's and earlier. They are also relevant to fans of that era. The ringtone/digital download era killed the album though. Now with streaming, the idea of an album is nearly a thing of the past. Artists who debuted in the 90's and early 00's will sell way more physical copies than streams whereas artists who debuted after 2004 or late in the 00's will have higher streams and downloads.

 

[Travellin' Man]

They are still relevant to artists who debuted in the 90's and the early 00's and earlier. They are also relevant to fans of that era. The ringtone/digital download era killed the album though. Now with streaming, the idea of an album is nearly a thing of the past. Artists who debuted in the 90's and early 00's will sell way more physical copies than streams whereas artists who debuted after 2004 or late in the 00's will have higher streams and downloads.

Yeah, I think so too.

 

[JustCKing]

CD's marked the beginning of the end of an album IMO. They weren't created to be listened to from start to finish like a cassette was.

 

[Travellin' Man]

CD's marked the beginning of the end of an album IMO. They weren't created to be listened to from start to finish like a cassette was.

Never looked at it like that, but that makes sense since it made it easier for u to skip around from this song to that song and not have to rewind/fast forward like a cassette

 

[kingdizzy01]

cd burners and mixtapes killed albums.

 

[DaveyDave]

Every medium goes through the singles era for a while and then albums come back once an artist figures out a way to use the media to its best as an album.

 

[classicmaterial]

Yes the album is dying but it'll continue to exist for sales purposes

That said the album was created by the industry in the first place to be able to charge more. Press up a 12" for pennies more than a 7", put 10 songs on it instead of 2 and charge 4 times as much. And it wasn't like the first albums were anything but collections of singles. Took artists like Stevie and Marvin to make an album actually become a complete body of work.

So really we're just getting back to the 7" era but in the digital age. Instead of putting a stack of 45s on top of a record player that autocycles through them we make playlists on our phones.

 

[Tommy Sheppard]

I don't even think cats do skits anymore.
*Listening to "The 20 Dollar Pyramid" as I type this*

big krit just had some skits on his recent album.

 

[Tommy Sheppard]

streaming and the internet killed albums.

fixed

 

[Travellin' Man]

big krit just had some skits on his recent album.

True!

 

[Ukbrotha]

cd burners and mixtapes killed albums.

But it didn’t though? It wasn’t until streaming and the internet did album sales decline. CD burners and mixtapes didn’t kill the album at all.