Things were going just hootingly for the music industry until someone invented MP3’s and spoilt the party. This advent was a veritable boon for the music listening public for whom music became more accessible and portable. It also became cheaper (or, in many cases free) and they weren’t tied to buying albums any more – they could choose which tracks to buy off an album leaving vast volumes of unwanted filler behind. This left the music industry, used to cleaning up by selling full, physical albums at exorbitant prices, somewhat out of pocket. The music industry has bleated, encrypted and litigated its way though the intervening decade before finally deciding to apply a bit of ‘creative’ thinking to the situation. “If they want files for these computer contraption thingies” they say, “let’s give them files”.

Several groups are developing new rich music media file formats that hope to take the act of listening to music into the multimedia age (apparently it didn’t arrive there yet). The resulting formats are, somewhat predictably, predominantly based around full albums. The music industry wants us to buy albums. Albums, they say, are meant to be listened to as a whole. Well that may be true if you’re Mastodon, but considerably less so if you’re Peter André. Reading between the lines of the industry rhetoric it’s clear the bottom line is the order of the day – albums are a lot more profitable. Each of these attempts to recreate the experience of an album in digital format and enrich it further with other extras. So the ‘race’ is on to become the next ubiquitous file format. There are 3 contenders in this valhallan battle. Here I’ll cover each separately.

The iTunes LP

To be fair to Apple, who have benefited no end from the digital revolution, there are no smoke and mirrors surrounding their attempt to digitise the LP experience (hence the name). They clearly want to sell more albums. They also realise that the music industry do also, but they have other ideas as we shall discover. Launching an iTunes LP file submerses you in a multimedia world themed around the artist and album. Along with the music (at standard ACC superior 192kbps quality) you get music videos, custom visualisations, album artwork and lyrics. All this in a swanky interactive environment inside iTunes. Although the music files will run on Apple’s iPod or iPhone range, the full multimedia experience won’t, although it may run on the forthcoming chocolate teapot known as the iPad. Inside the file is an assortment of images and Javascript that, although fathomable for someone with some web development skill, is poorly documented and probably out of reach of all but the majors.

Being the only format already to make it market (launched August 2009) would seem to give them a head start on the pack. However, this evidently hasn’t translated into a resounding success, which is perhaps a sign of the music buying public’s nonchalance regarding such a format, but more likely to be related to the fact that the music industry has something else on the burner and are thus not wasting time releasing on iTunes LP’s. Which bring me on to…

CMX

Dubbed CMX (Connected Media Experience – snappy eh?) the music industry’s apparoach to this concept was to club together and throw a bunch of their ill-gotten cash at it. Originally scheduled to launch around the same time as the iTunes LP, presumably to cut them off at the pass, this has now been delayed until ‘quarter 2 2010’. We don’t know the precise details but we do know just enough to say that it is conceptually virtually the same as the iTunes LP, however, already there are obvious flaws that hobble it out of the starting blocks. Firstly, it’s Flash based, so it won’t play on an iPod, and initially probably not on any portable media player. Given the ubiquity of the last decades must have electronic accessory it’s hard to see how CMX can catch on. Secondly, it looks likely that the music will only be playable as part of the CMX file. Which means that it won’t function in iTunes, and you can’t put them on your MP3 player either!

This is still speculation given that the details of CMX have yet to be released. However, given that Apple are unlikely to support this format, and the music industry will not be quick to forsake a format that they’ve poured a load of cash into we would seem to be at a stalemate. But there is a 3rd way…

MusicDNA

The new kid on the block it may be, but MusicDNA was created by one of the very arch-criminals responsible for this bloody mess in the first place – Karlheinz Brandenburg co-creator of the MP3. Unlike the iTunes LP and CMX, MusicDNA isn’t merely a repackaging of the digital file format into an album like experience, it has a whiff of the future about it. You see MusicDNA has smarts. It carries a bunch of metadata as per the MPEG-7 standard which carry information on stuff like tempo, instrumentation, mood as well as all the usual stuff, all captured at the point of encoding. This will allow applications like iTunes and services like Pandora and Last.fm to create weird, wonderful, and most importantly, powerful ways to recommend and playlist stuff for you. Also, the MusicDNA file is alive. It contains dynamic components that update when the file is opened. This will allow artists to include stuff like tour dates and blog posts that would always be up to date. You can copy (read pirate) MusicDNA files, and they will play just fine, however this dynamic content will no longer function, a feature which the makers say will help guard against piracy. I’m not so sure.

MusicDNA comes with a plethora of applications to encode and run, as well as the facilities for developers to build their own applications to make use of all its magical features (like iPhone and Facebook apps). It’s also MP3 backwards compatible which means it should play on anything that will play MP3’s (although I’ll believe this when I see it). Although the format made it to market (well, it’s not quite in the wild yet, but has ‘launched’) before the tardy CMX format it currently has no backing from the major labels (although a couple of independent labels are on board) and is unlikely to get it until CMX is abandoned or fails. So, short of a sudden upswell of public demand, MusicDNA would seem to be at a bit of handicap.

The question is, does the world really need a rich, album based file format? Albums are more and more becoming the bastion of hardcore fans, music lovers/collectors and audiophiles. In all cases, owning a physical copy of the album is usually the order of the day. In the latter two, audio quality is a key concern, something that none of these formats tackle. Barring the spaceage extras that accompany MusicDNA, all these extras are already available, usually offered as a DVD, with premium copies of the physical equivalents, so immediacy is all they’ve really got going for them. It’s difficult to see this becoming a Betamax vs. VHS or HD DVD vs. Blue Ray style standoff – all those formats offered features not previously available. MusicDNA is the only format with the differentiators to make it a viable alternative to the ubiquitous MP3 (and indeed AAC), but are these value adds really enough to sway the hardcore as well as change the general record buying public’s buying habits? It seems unlikely.

In addition to this, there are signs that the MP3 itself could soon become obsolete as vast numbers of music consumers are moving to increasingly mobile streaming services like (music industry sponsored) Spotify.

The final nail in these foetus’s coffins is the fact that these files will almost certainly be charged at a premium. Given that the music buying public are hard pressed to pay anything for their music, it seems a stretch to expect them to fork out more. When you add to that the fact that, due to the extra effort and expense (not to mention expertise) involved in producing these formats, smaller record labels and self releasers will unlikely bother, these formats would seem to be a lost cause.

In the end, all this talk of recreating the album experience is somewhat moot. It’s unlikely that CD’s and vinyl are likely become obsolete any time soon and simply recreating this experience in digital form is fulfilling a need that doesn’t exist for anyone other than the record labels. Albums have a place in the future of music consumption, but it’s not the form that the music takes that is going to evolve, it’s very way we discover and experience music. I’ll tackle this in subsequent articles.

Everyone’s saying it. It’s something worth celebrating. This really means something to people – in these darkened times, like so many before, people look to music to provide uplift, empathy, indulgence, inspiration. So shout it from the rooftops folks! Oh wait, most of those people (ie. people with half a brain) know this already don’t they? Let’s be more specific shall we? Get on the internet, identify a record label, and shout it out to them – email, phone, hack their site, get on down to their HQ in person. Here’s what you’re going to shout: “Despite you it has been a good year in music!”

The music industry has spent the last year telling us that the conditions, where it’s now easier and cheaper to access more music, hear more artists, love their work, is bad for music overall. How are we supposed to believe that the readjustment going on in the music industry is bad for us, when evidence clearly suggests otherwise? What we are paying to fund when we spend a tenner on a CD, is a bloated industry, desperately in need of streamlining and modernisation. Why should we bear that cost?

I read a depressing interview with French avant-guard/metal indie Season of Mist (home to Dillinger Escape Plan, Mayhem, Cynic among others) in this month’s Terrorizer. Through the years they’ve been committed to bringing innovative sounds to the market, but boss Michael Berberian says he’s not signing any new acts because their business cannot sustain them, until something is done to redress the balance. He goes on to suggest that the situation “is killing the the artistic side”. Depressing? Depressing indeed that such a defeatist and narrow view exists in a label that sees itself as cutting edge. Killing the artistic side? Oh wait, so everyone will stop making music because it got less profitable to do so, oh please. How is this helping all the bands out there? How is it helping the music fans hear the best new and innovative music? Really clever business plan mate, cos all the best businesses got through tough times by saying “let’s just hunker down until it blows over – if we complain enough something will be done”. I’ve got news for you friend, it ain’t going to blow over, and you will have 20 redundant staff on your conscience when you go under because of your lackadaisical attitude. Fuck you.

There are signs of hope out there. Earache-signed old school thrashers Gama Bomb just released their new album for download free of charge. Also Earache’s excellent and timely repackaging of the Peel Grindcore sessions (Grind Madness at the BBC) shows some real business and commercial smarts. British Stoner crew Taint have released their latest offering exclusively to buy on vinly, but have included a code to redeem a free download of the album online (you may remember me recently championing this approach).

This is the sort of thinking that’s going to help labels with the balls to deserve the business that they run trade through the tough times. Quite why the majority of the music industry doesn’t think it operates in the same economic environment as the rest of the business world is beyond me. Wake up people, because the music is happening without you.

It’s been a great year for music because the bands and artists made it that way, despite the harbingers of doom in the music industry.

Bands, you don’t need the record industry bringing you down, sapping your income to pay for accountants, useless, arrogant A&R men, and their £100 a day coke habit. You’re better off than you have ever been before as it’s easier than ever before to do things your own way. The world is waiting for you, so go out there and grab it!

Whilst recovering from the festive indulgent customary at this time of year I happened to find myself watching the 3rd installment of the Ice Age franchise which we bought as a Christmas present for my kid. The film itself is reasonably diverting which is nice, because I’ll be forced to endure it many many more times. More interesting than this animated child fodder is the fact that distributor has chosen to include a digital copy of the film on the DVD and are openly encouraging folk to stick it on their laptop and iPod to enjoy on the go. Now you may remember that this is precisely the sort of behaviour I have been suggesting for the music industry. It makes some sense to include either a digital copy with the CD/Vinyl or a promo code to download it for free – after all, the vast majority of buyers will simply rip the CD before they even listen to it. The latter option seems like a terrific opportunity for further cross sell and upsell as the download site would be crammed with advertising. Bands could even withhold hidden tracks or downloadable extras to incentivise fans to download rather than rip it.

I’ll be interested to see whether a) this becomes common practice for film and TV distribution and b) whether the (infuriatingly retarded) music industry will take the cue and start doing the same. We can only hope.

Me, Yesterday.

It’s been a while since graced this dark corner of the internet with my presence. It may come as a surprise to you but I do have a day job, and these things have a habit of getting in the way of real life. I’ve spent the last couple of months being totally occupied by a project that has been progressively swallowing up my life for the past 2 years. It finally reached its zenith and now things are starting to calm down a little bit, hence my return to my ‘hobby’ – essentially talking shit to anyone who will listen.

There’s possibly an irony to be read into the fact I have a 9 – 5 (if only!) job, when many of the bands that I write about hold me in some level of contempt for doing so. Many a song has been written damning the ‘rat race’ – it seems to be a preoccupation for some bands. Cathedral damn me to the Corpsecycle, while Cancer Bats urge me to keep my chin up on Deathsmarch. Radiohead just want me to slow down.

I’m not going to defend the repetitive cycle of daily toil for an uncaring master, but it does have its benefits (like a regular salary), as does life in a band, however in the latter’s case these are often short lived or entirely illusory. The glitter and glory of life in a band is rarely what people expect. Layne Staley complained that his all consuming heroine habit “seems so sick to the hypocrite norm” while progressively removing himself from the gene pool – he was not a happy guy. Mustain’s and Hetfield’s foray into the rock and roll dream nearly destroyed them, and in Kurt Cobain’s (and countless others) case it actually did. These are just a few high profile cases shadowing countless others.

There’s glamour to these grubby tales, but for the vast majority of musicians a much more terrifying fate is to befall them: normality. Most artists don’t get to live the dream for very long, and when the fickle and unforgiving masses forsake them they more often than not have to join the merry rat race with the rest of us. Q magazine used to run (and may still do) a morbidly entertaining regular titled ‘Where are they now?” (or something similar) which tracked down short lived bands in their current purgatory. Cue quotes like “I haven’t seen John in a while, last I heard he was selling shoes in Birmingham”, or “I’m happy in my life as a full time mother and community worker, it’s far more fulfilling than being in a band”. However, there are countless stories of rock stars dropping off the radar to lead a mundane existence only to reappear decades later to pick up where they left off, a process documented in the gloriously deranged rockumentary Anvil.

Obviously assimilation into the rat race doesn’t need to be the end of a life in music, in many cases the day job exists largely to facilitate the music. As the money drains out of the music industry this will more and more become the norm, and certainly shouldn’t be shied away from. But is it possible to have a serious career as well as maintaining a fruitful career while maintaining a productive band?

Of course plenty of folks go on to have well paid and fulfilling jobs helping other bands pass through the music industry grinder.

I fully intend to break the shackles of the rat race at some point. At my age it’s probably a little late to try my hand at the rock n’ roll dream, maybe I’ll just take up cheese making instead, after all if it’s good enough for Alex James…

I was in the unenviable situation this past week of not having a copy of the new Baroness album. This sort of situation is not usually a big issue, but this particular time it left me in an existential quandary that lead me to yet more pondering on the nature of music retail.

You see, I want the physical copy. Specifically I want the CD. This CD would immediately be ripped directly to MP3 and unceremoniously injected onto my iPod. But having a physical copy is still important to me. I place a certain value in this, not least with a band like Baroness who have such delightful artwork.

So having not had the forethought to pre-order and finding the HMV cupboard predictably bare I was left either having to wait a couple of days for a copy from Amazon, listening to it on Myspace, downloading from iTunes or ‘borrowing’ a copy from one of those lovely fire-sharing sites. Now, I don’t want to pay twice, and I simply cannot wait. Myspace isn’t an option as I need it on my iPod so I can listen on the go. Spotify is potentially an option, but I’ll have to use my iPhone for that, and the battery only last 73 seconds, and I need that for the making/taking calls. So I’m left with the prospect of having to ‘borrow’ it for a few days while ordering off the web. What sort of a situation is this to find myself in in the digital age?

What would be really handy is if someone would sell the CD online and then give me the MP3’s to be getting on with while I wait. I don’t want to be charged extra for this, I’ve already paid for the music. However, decoupling the music from the physical product has some interesting theoretical consequences. Let’s deconstruct this situation a little.

Basically, what I want is the music. To accompany that music I would like a physical item. In this case it’s a CD, but it could be a record, tape, USB stick, a tuneful midget with the music memorised, whatever. In the modern age, there’s no real need to have anything actually contain the music for an individual. The vast majority of people don’t need CD’s any more than they need the bottle containing the beer, it just so happens to be one medium for transporting the stuff inside.

So the situation that we’re in is that people choose to ‘attach’ a CD to their music purchase. Or put another way, they buy a CD which comes (conveniently) with some music on it. But why are obsolete (in the practical sense) music containing objects the only choice of ‘thing’ that comes as an accompaniment to the music? Why not t-shirts, posters, books, shoes, branded luxury leather recliner etc.? The record companies have a vested interest in getting you to buy stuff from them, and especially walking-billboard/culture items like t-shirts. This way they incentivise people to buy from them (rather than ‘stealing’ the music) as well as getting that person in a purchase cycle with them – which is potentially the most valuable aspect here.

So why not offer MP3 + CD packages? (and thus solving my immediate need) But also offer MP3 + t-shirt packages, or with records or hats or hat stands or gig tickets or books or comics or all of the above in a single transaction. Why not sell t-shirts in shops with a memory stick with the music. Hell, give the actual CD away with the t-shirt, but without the cover or any fancy packaging.

People could just go to iTunes and buy the album, but why not just buy a t-shirt and get the album for ‘free’? Of course you could make more money by selling both, but don’t kid yourself on how many folks would bother buying a t-shirt once they’ve bought the music, and if you ask me, a t-shirt sale is more valuable than a music sale.

In the end I ‘borrowed’ the music and the bought the album on vinyl, which costs more than the CD that I would have otherwise bought. I’m struggling to see where Baroness lost out here….

Apparently there are trace elements of metal in bottled water...

Still the filesharing battles wages on, despite the fact that there is no war. Dom Lawson’s entertaining article on this subject apparently fell foul of Metal Hammer’s editorial scythe. We can only assume that they didn’t want to fall on the wrong side of this prickly debate. And who can blame them, why risk pissing off your superiors over a war that’s apparently being waged elsewhere?

I do wonder though, how many folks out there who are earnestly ‘trying’ before conveniently ‘forgetting’ to buy. Is this costing the music industry money? Maybe. However, that’s largely beside the point. The issue here is that music is no longer a commodity that can be contained and rationed. The commodities are the physical items that accompany the music – the CD, the cover, the box – these are tangible goods that should be exchanged for money.

It’s because music is freely available that this situation exists. I’m sorry to restate the obvious, but it’s worth thinking about this. Water is ‘freely’ available in the UK. We pay for that by way of taxes (rates). The only time you pay at the point of receipt of water is when you buy the bottled stuff, and then what you’re actually paying for is the container and the convenience (plus the mark-up of whatever establishment you purchase it from). The future model of music will resemble this, and take a look at Spotify to see this in action. The music industry already knows this and the majors all own a stake in Spotify. The problem with this is the margins are much lower with models like this, and until the majors can shuffle their operating models to account for this and pacify the investors, they’re going to carry on chasing rainbows with lawyers and politicians.

By the way, the words on this page are not a commodity either. By the time this piece makes it onto the blog it will have eaten at least an hour and a half of my time. This blog probably eats more of my time per month than your average unsigned band does of the band members’ time. Should you wish to take these and consume them in any way you see fit then please feel free to do so. If you want me to save them onto a CD and send them across to you I’ll charge you for the CDR, postage, packaging, and round that up for my efforts. If more people start to read this blog, maybe I’ll put some advertising on it and try and cover the cost of the server and maybe I’ll even get a bit extra. If you want to take any of my articles and make money out of them (god knows how you would do this) by posting them on your own, commercial, website, then you will have to pay me. If you do not I may take legal action. Will I try and charge you for simply reading this article/blog despite that is takes time, effort and money to run? Hell no! Readers are more important to me than profit, and without them I stand no chance of making any anyway. The printed media industries learned this years ago. These days, some newspapers are moving to models that they no longer charge even for the physical product, and make money from the extra advertising revenue gleaned from the larger distribution.

I don’t know why I’m telling this to you lot – you already know this. I also don’t know why I bitch about the fact that this debate is still happening, I actually quite enjoy it.

It’s still happening you know. Just as the majority of the world ignores the unfolding inevitability of global warming, the music industry continues bury it’s head in the sand with regards to the basic reality of file sharing. I’m going to keep it short, as I’m almost certainly shouting into the storm on this one (not to mention repeating what’s been said a hundred times before).

I’m not going to get into the morality or legality of file sharing or copyright ‘theft’. I neither indulge in nor facilitate illegal file sharing. The ethics of the issue are entirely beside the point. Here is the point:

To try to stop file sharing, or any other type of media sharing for that matter, is like trying to stop Niagara Falls using a sieve.

So here’s my open letter to the music industry. It’s mostly directed at the bigger players, but everyone has a part to play:

Dear Music Industry,

Your attempt to scare file sharers and ‘copyright thieves’ into submission with sporadic (and costly) guerilla legal terrorism is not working, and will never work. It’s an unsustainable strategy. The UK government’s plan to stop it at ISP level is not only too late, but it’s doomed to failure.

Understand this: the techies and hackers and media junkies that facilitate the technologies that enable the easy propagation of media are for the most part determined, distributed, sophisticated and well hidden. This is not like Vietnam for the music industry; it’s not even comparable to the war on terror – it’s a much harder war to win. Your enemy understands the terrain, the war, and the weapons infinitely better than you do. All you have is transparent politics and clumsy legality. Even if you do manage to shut down this cell or that, or contain a few types of technology, then more will quickly spring up in their place that are tougher and more elusive. You have not the skills, money or time to fight this and maintain a viable business. I make no effort to legitimise or glamorise what your enemy does, I’m just stating a simple reality.

Consider this: within the next decade it will be possible to contain all the songs ever recorded onto a single, portable device that can be purchased cheaply. This is not being developed to undermine your ability to do business – file sharing is the least important thing that such a device will do.

Now, I do realise that the legal onslaught from the music industry is largely a charade while you buy time to work out how they actually survive this conflict. Whether you, being the entities that currently occupy the music industry, survive or not matters little to the folks on the outside of it. This isn’t the death of the music industry. it’s also not a revolution or insurrection – nothing that dramatic. What we have here is an evolution, and if you want to survive this Darwinian episode then you’ll need to evolve – find new ways to monetize, commoditise, homogenise and abuse these technologies and trends – in other words, doing what you do best.

Please stop whining and just get on with it.

To those who are embracing the brave new world then true glory awaits you. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

Yours hopefully,

Alex

I’m aware that no-one in the music industry will read this, or agree, or care, but I feel better for having said it.

The Good

Devin Townsend nonchalantly Tweets:

@dvntownsend counting down…late nights, great progress…suddenly very happy about record 2. Released around Nov 20.

and unleashes more verbose psychobabble on the world:

Musically, ‘Addicted’ is along the lines of the big, wall-of-sound hard rock/heavy metal of Ocean Machine and (The Devin Townsend Project’s) ‘Accelerated Evolution’ — even Physicist at points. It is a very direct and ‘to-the-point’ album with an emphasis on groove and the chorus.

Exciting stuff, seriously. If it’s 1/10th as good as Terria or Accelerated Evolution, it’ll be amazing. Perhaps more tantalizing however is:

On other notes: I have been rehearsing with a new band, and we will start touring in early 2010, representing all the back catalogue of solo material, from ‘Ki’, ‘Addicted’, Physicist, Ziltoid, Terria, Ocean Machine, The Devin Townsend Band, Infinity etc… I have some big plans for this and rehearsals are sounding amazing. The touring entity will be called ‘Devin Townsend’ and is essentially a way for me to get out there and interact again and showcase 15 years of music that never really got its fair shake. We look forward to seeing you out there!

Yeah! You better be doing that in the UK Mr. Townsend!

Next – A new track released off of Megadeth’s anticipated new album:

Do I hear some leanings back to Countdown to Extinction days? Speed metal loveliness indeed!

Every Time I Die released another new track off of the forthcoming New Junk Aesthetic on their Myspace. This is a delightfully pleasant recording, but does anyone else notice a hint of a softer, more commercial sound seeping through? Could this be the beginning of a slippery slope for the southern hardcore mavericks?

This week I discovered that not all Metalcore sucks, with the introduction to my music vocabulary of Burnt by the Sun. Like a darker version of Hatebreed, they keep the breakdowns to a minimum and deliver top notch aggressive metal. I may even put on some big sunglasses and a fake beard (to wear over my real beard) and venture out surreptitiously to but a copy.

Other stuff keeping me happy:

• No Made Sense with their brutal progressive hardcore and stupid sounding album title
• Photonic, which has lead me to dust off various albums by Fugazi, Pavement and Guided by Voices
• Oceansize. Apparently they have an EP out soon.
• Earth. Slowly I’m getting my head around this most frustrating of bands. Albums Pentastar and Hex are simply beautiful but also infuriating.
• Revocation. Everyone is carping on about them like infatuated teenagers thanks to Cosmo Lee’s article suggesting that they may be the next great metal band. That’s probably going a bit far at this early stage, but they are pretty good. The guitar solo on Dismantle the Dictator is to die for. No doubt Metal Hammer will be forcing them down our throat for the next 3 years.

The Bad

Desparately naive wannabe journo’s laying into indisputably legendary bands like Black Sabbath. Why on earth would you write such an ill-informed bucket of badger shit is totally beyond me.

Music streaming site Spotify is part owned by the evil overlords of the music industry in an attempt to keep the site afloat in the face of pitiful advertising revenues and in lieu of paying out royalties to the record labels. If this isn’t depressing enough, it sounds like the artists aren’t getting any royalties either and are unlikely to see any dividends when some cash burdened corporate is stupid enough to buy this service which is as likely to see profit as I am likely to turn green and transform into a million dollar bill.

…and the Ugly

This dude bustin’ some classy moves. I have been known to do this after a couple of beverages, which is when it gets truly ugly.

This may be a “sure we all knew about this Alex, we were just keeping it a secret from you” moment, but it came as a surprise for me that there are no less than 2 rich digital media formats being touted to reinvigorate the ‘dying’ album format.

I hadn’t realised that the album had was dying – I still buy but most of my music either on CD or download whole albums. However much of the rest of the music buying world doesn’t – the trend is towards buying single tracks, and some bands have even opted to become singles only zones and eschew albums all together. After all, what’s the point of recording an entire, well packaged, sonically aligned collection, when most folks only ever download track 9 because they heard it on the radio?

It is for this reason that AC/DC refuse resolutely to (officially) release their music on digital format – we record albums, they say, not single tracks, and they’re made to be consumed that way. It’s not hard to see why they, and many other bands, feel this way.

The album frequently marks an epoch in time. “Here are 10 songs that represent this moment in our lives”, a distillation of their microcosmic zeitgeist if you will. All the best albums are comprised of tracks that feel like they really belong together, and they wouldn’t have sounded right on the previous or subsequent album. A poor album is often one that doesn’t gel. These are often albums made up of a mix of ‘singles’ or filler, and it’s perhaps these types of albums that no-one it mourning the death of.

Many albums are aligned on theme (Muse’s Absolution), tone and style (Death’s Sound of Perseverance, anything by Earth) and concept (Leviathan, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son), not to mention countless other configurations (try Flora by Chord for a rather obscure one). Even the track ordering is, for many bands, considered a fine art – Radiohead nearly split up over the ordering of OK Computer!

Some of the best albums released recently have been exactly that: albums, not just collections of good tunes. People downloading single tracks from Mastodon’s concept masterpiece Crack in the Skye surely miss the point and musch it’s beauty and power. Opeth’s Watershed and Baroness’s Red Album may not be ‘concept albums’, but the tracks belong together – they gel.

And it’s not all about the music. CD packaging is getting better and better and vinyl is still going strong. Putting together an album isn’t about recording a bunch of tracks, batching them up and putting them out, it’s an art form in itself, and one that many bands and fans alike still care deeply about.

So who thinks the album is dead? The bean counters of the record industry, that’s who.

The idea of repackaging the music download is not a bad one. The download market is one that never really lent itself to the album, and if people want to download an album, I can’t see any problem with making it a richer more rewarding experience for them. Packaging video, cover art, lyrics and (oh dear god no!) ringtones with the music is a way to help extend the album artform, and replace some of the value of the music that is lost in translation to download.

However, this whiffs of a cynical ploy by the music industry to sell more downloads to recoup revenues since those dastardly, party smashing plebeians, the public decided that they wanted freedom to download music however they damn well want. Given this motive it has the potential to pervert and cheapen the album art form out of recognition.

This is perhaps a moot point, as do people really want or need this? CD sales may be declining, but this is merely a symptom of the passive music fans who never really wanted whole albums anyway, but were forced to buy them, moving to another format. CD’s and vinyl are still the format of choice for real music fans. Given that music is now easily exchanged, bands are forced to put out much higher quality packaging and extras which, over time will become more valuable, collectable and will be truly cherished by fans in the way that these formats used to be.

So is the album format dead? Hell no, It’s stronger than ever!

(If you need any evidence that the CD Album format is alive and well check this out)