Have album’s become irrelevant? This is an interesting extension on that last post. If you ask me, I don’t think albums are irrelevant, they just are no longer as static as they used to be. Albums were created because there was no format that could reasonably deliver individual songs and they gave you something more tangible to promote around.
Now, with the interweb and itunes,there are no format constraints and promotion is easy as pie.
That leads to some questions:
What value can Record labels add by organizing albums differently?
Look at the cool information Pandora is gathering for the Music Genome Project and how iTunes lets you browse playlists. Albums should be looked at as a way to add value through organizing information rather than a packaged product.
What if you could buy/subscribe to an “Album” and you would receive update/new songs for free?
This could be cool- almost a new music BitTorrent. People access to new music before it reached mainstream.
What if artists were signed on a song to song basis?
It would be up to them to promote themselves and based on the number of song downloads or feedback, the Record company would agree to sign them for a new song (they could also gather feedback on what their next tracks could be).
The head scratcher is what to do with the equity in already recorded music. Oh well, something for another day.
If not, toss it. 