The album era was a period in English-language
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s in which the
album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption.
It was primarily driven by three successive music recording formats: the 33⅓ rpm
long-playing record (LP), the
audiocassette
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Otten ...
, and the
compact disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...
.
Rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...
ians from the US and the UK were often at the forefront of the era, which is sometimes called the album-rock era in reference to their sphere of influence and activity. The term "album era" is also used to refer to the marketing and aesthetic period surrounding a recording artist's album release.
LP albums developed in the early 20th century and were originally marketed for
classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
and wealthier adult consumers. However,
single
Single may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Single (music), a song release
Songs
* "Single" (Natasha Bedingfield song), 2004
* "Single" (New Kids on the Block and Ne-Yo song), 2008
* "Single" (William Wei song), 2016
* "Single", by ...
s still dominated the music industry, eventually through the success of
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from Africa ...
performers in the 1950s, when the LP format was utilized more for
soundtrack
A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...
,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, and some pop recordings. It was not until the mid-1960s, when
the Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
began to release artistically ambitious and top-selling LPs, that more rock and pop acts followed suit and the industry embraced albums to immense success while burgeoning
rock criticism validated their cultural value. By the next decade, the LP had emerged as a fundamental artistic unit and a widely popular item with young people, often marketed using the idea of a
concept album
A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...
, which was employed especially by
progressive musicians in both
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
and
soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".
Etymology
The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...
.
At the end of the 1970s, LP albums experienced a decline in sales while the singles format was reemphasized by the developments of
punk rock,
disco
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric pia ...
, and
MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
's
music video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...
programming. The record industry combatted this trend by gradually displacing LPs with CDs, releasing fewer singles that were
hits
Hits or H.I.T.S. may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* ''H.I.T.S.'', 1991 album by New Kids on the Block
* ''...Hits'' (Phil Collins album), 1998
* ''Hits'' (compilation series), 1984–2006; 2014 - a British compilation album se ...
to force sales of their accompanying albums, and inflating the prices of CD albums over the next two decades, when their production proliferated. The success of major pop stars led to the development of an extended
rollout model among record labels, marketing an album around a catchy
lead single, an attention-grabbing music video, novel merchandise, media coverage, and a supporting
concert tour. Women and black musicians continued to gain critical recognition among the album era's predominantly white-male and rock-oriented canon, with the burgeoning
hip hop genre developing album-based standards in its own right. In the 1990s, the music industry saw an
alternative rock
Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...
and
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
boom, leading to a revenue peak of $15 billion in 1999 based in CD sales. However, the development of
file sharing networks such as
Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn ...
began to undermine the format's viability, as consumers were able to
rip
Rest in peace (RIP), a phrase from the Latin (), is sometimes used in traditional Christian services and prayers, such as in the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist denominations, to wish the soul of a decedent eternal rest and peace.
...
and share CD tracks digitally over the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
.
In the early 21st century,
music download
A music download (commonly referred to as a digital download) is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer, portable media player, MP3 player or smartphone. Thi ...
ing and
streaming
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
services emerged as popular means of distribution, as album sales suffered a steep decline and recording acts generally focused on singles, effectively ending the album era. The
critical paradigm also shifted away from rock and toward more innovative works being produced in pop and
urban music, which dominated
record sales in the 2000s. High-profile pop acts continued to market their albums seriously, with
surprise release
A surprise album or surprise release refers to the release of an album with little or no prior announcement, marketing or promotion. The strategy contrasts traditional album releases, which typically feature weeks or months of advertising in the f ...
s emerging as a popular strategy. While physical music sales declined further worldwide, the CD remained popular in some countries such as Japan, due in part to the marketing and fandom surrounding top-selling
Japanese idol
An is a type of entertainer marketed for image, attractiveness, and personality in Japanese pop culture. Idols are primarily singers with training in acting, dancing, and modeling. Idols are commercialized through merchandise and endorsements b ...
performers, whose success represented a growing shift away from the global dominance of major English-language acts. By the end of the 2010s, concept albums had reemerged with culturally relevant and critically successful personal narratives. Meanwhile, pop and rap artists garnered the most album streams with minimal marketing that capitalized on the digital era's on-demand consumer culture, which evolved even more rapidly during the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
and its
impact on the music industry.
Pre-history
Technological developments in the early 20th century led to sweeping changes in the way recorded music was made and sold. Prior to the LP, the standard medium for recorded music had been the 78
rpm
Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines.
Standards
ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...
gramophone record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...
, made from
shellac and featuring a three-to-five minute capacity per side.
The capacity limitations placed constraints on the composing processes of recording artists, while the fragility of shellac prompted the packaging of these records in empty booklets resembling
photo albums,
with typically brown-colored wrapping paper as covers.
The introduction of
polyvinyl chloride in record production led to vinyl records, which played with less noise and more durability.
In the 1940s, the market for commercial- and home-use recordings was dominated by the competing
RCA Victor
RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Aris ...
and
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
, whose chief engineer
Peter Carl Goldmark pioneered the development of the
12-inch long play (LP) vinyl record.
This format could hold recordings as long as 52 minutes, or 26 minutes per side, at a speed of 33⅓ rpm, and was playable with a small-tipped "microgroove"
stylus
A stylus (plural styli or styluses) is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision w ...
designed for
home playback systems.
Officially introduced in 1948 by Columbia, LPs became known as "record albums", termed in reference to the photo album-like 78 packaging.
Another innovation from Columbia was the addition of graphic and typographic design to album jacket covers, introduced by Alex Steinweiss, the label's art director. Encouraged by its positive effect on LP sales, the music industry adopted illustrated
album cover
An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...
s as a standard by the 1950s.
Originally, the album was primarily marketed for
classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
listeners,
and the first LP released was ''
Mendelssohn: Concerto in E Minor for Violin and Orchestra Op. 64'' (1948) by
Nathan Milstein
Nathan Mironovich Milstein ( – December 21, 1992) was a Russian-born American virtuoso violinist.
Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bach's solo violin works and ...
and the
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York.
Film soundtrack
A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...
s,
Broadway show
cast recordings,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
musicians, and some
pop
Pop or POP may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* Pop music, a musical genre Artists
* POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade
* Pop!, a UK pop group
* Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band
Albums
* ''Pop'' (G ...
singers such as
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...
soon utilized the new longer format. Jazz artists especially, such as
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based ...
,
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...
, and
Dave Brubeck
David Warren Brubeck (; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasti ...
, preferred the LP for how its capacity allowed them to record their
compositions
Composition or Compositions may refer to:
Arts and literature
* Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography
*Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...
with concert-length
arrangement
In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orches ...
s and
improvisations.
The original Broadway cast recording of the musical ''
Kiss Me, Kate'' (1949) sold 100,000 copies in its first month of release and, together with ''
South Pacific'' (which topped the album charts for 63 weeks), brought more attention to LPs, while the Broadway cast recording of ''
My Fair Lady'' became the first LP to sell one million copies.
However, in the 1950s and into the 1960s, 45 rpm
seven-inch single
In music, a single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record
The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed ...
sales were still considered the primary market for the music industry, and albums remained a secondary market. The careers of notable rock and roll performers such as
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
were driven primarily by single sales.
1960s: Beginnings in the rock era
Concept albums and ''Rubber Soul'' (1964–1966)
The arrival of
the Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
in the US in 1964 is credited by music writers
Ann Powers and
Joel Whitburn
Joel Carver Whitburn (November 29, 1939 – June 14, 2022) was an American author and music historian, responsible for setting up the Record Research, Inc. series of books on record chart placings.
Early life
Joel Carver Whitburn was born in Wau ...
as heralding the "classic album era" or "rock album era". In his ''Concise Dictionary of Popular Culture'',
Marcel Danesi
Marcel Danesi (born 1946) is Professor of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is known for his work in language, communications and semiotics and is Director of the program in semiotics and communication theory. H ...
comments that "the album became a key aspect of the
countercultural movement of the 1960s, with its musical, aesthetic, and political themes. From this, the '
concept album
A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...
' emerged, with the era being called the 'album era.
According to media academic Roy Shuker, with the development of the concept album in the 1960s, "the album changed from a collection of heterogeneous songs into a narrative work with a single theme, in which individual songs segue into one another", "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical".
Conversely, popular culture historian Jim Cullen says the concept album is "sometimes
rroneouslyassumed to be a product of the rock era", with ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' writer Noel Murray arguing that Sinatra's 1950s LPs, such as ''
In the Wee Small Hours
''In the Wee Small Hours'' is the ninth studio album by American vocalist Frank Sinatra. It was released in April 1955 by Capitol and produced by Voyle Gilmore with arrangements by Nelson Riddle. All the songs on the album deal with themes suc ...
'' (1955), had pioneered the form earlier with their "thematically linked songs". Similarly,
Will Friedwald
Will Friedwald (born September 16,
1961) is an American author and music critic. He has written for newspapers that include the ''Wall Street Journal'', ''New York Times'', ''Village Voice'', ''Newsday'', ''New York Observer'', and ''New York Su ...
observes that
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson Sr. (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential singers in history, and was often referred to by contemporaries as "The Ge ...
had also released thematically unified albums at the turn of the 1960s that made him a major LP artist in
R&B, peaking in 1962 with the high-selling ''
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music''.
The track listings on these antecedents, however, typically consisted of material that was not written by the artist.
With their
hot rod
Hot rods are typically American cars that might be old, classic, or modern and that have been rebuilt or modified with large engines optimised for speed and acceleration. One definition is: "a car that's been stripped down, souped up and made ...
-themed 1963 release ''
Little Deuce Coupe'',
the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American Rock music, rock band that formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian Wilson, Brian, Dennis Wilson, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and frie ...
became the first act to release a concept album that consisted almost entirely of original songwriting.
In his 2006 book ''American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3'', academic
Larry Starr credits the Beach Boys' 1964 concept albums ''
Shut Down Volume 2'' and ''
All Summer Long'' with marking "the beginnings of ... the increasing importance of album tracks, and eventually of albums themselves". Music journalist
Gary Graff points to
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
's ''
Highway 61 Revisited
''Highway 61 Revisited'' is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records. Having until then recorded mostly acoustic music, Dylan used rock musicians as his backing band on ever ...
'' (released in August 1965) as another possible starting point to the album era, as it constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles... with filler tracks."
Danesi cites the Beatles' December 1965 release ''
Rubber Soul'' as one of the era's first concept albums.
According to music historian
Bill Martin, ''Rubber Soul'' was the "turning point" for popular music, in that for the first time "the ''album'' rather than the song became the basic unit of artistic production."
Author David Howard agrees, saying that "pop's stakes had been raised into the stratosphere" by ''Rubber Soul'' and that "suddenly, it was more about making a great album without
filler than a great single." In January 1966, ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' magazine referred to the opening sales of ''Rubber Soul'' in the US (1.2 million copies over nine days) as proof of teenage record-buyers gravitating towards the LP format. While it was in keeping with the industry norm in the UK, the lack of a hit single on ''Rubber Soul'' added to the album's identity in the US as a self-contained artistic statement.
Following the Beatles' example, several rock albums intended as artistic statements were released in 1966, including
the Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, rhythmically d ...
' ''
Aftermath'', the Beach Boys' ''
Pet Sounds'', Dylan's ''
Blonde on Blonde
''Blonde on Blonde'' is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, ...
'', the Beatles' own ''
Revolver
A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six roun ...
'', and
the Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic lineup consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist and singer Pete Townshend, bass guitarist and singer John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. They are considered ...
's ''
A Quick One''.
Music journalist
Mat Snow
Mat Snow (born 20 October 1958) is an English music journalist, magazine editor, and author. From 1995 to 1999, he was the editor of ''Mojo'' magazine; he subsequently served in the same role on the football magazine ''FourFourTwo''.
During the ...
cites these five releases, together with
Otis Redding's 1965 LP ''
Otis Blue'', as evidence that "the album era was here, and though hit singles still mattered, they were no longer pop's most important money spinners and artistic statements." According to
Jon Pareles, the music industry profited immensely and redefined its economic identity because of the era's rock musicians, who "started to see themselves as something more than suppliers of ephemeral hit singles". In the case of the British music industry, the commercial success of ''Rubber Soul'' and ''Aftermath'' foiled attempts to re-establish the LP market as the domain of wealthier, adult record-buyers. From early 1966, record companies there ceased their policy of promoting adult-oriented entertainers over rock acts, and embraced
budget albums for their lower-selling artists to cater to the increased demand for LPs.
Post-''Sgt. Pepper'' (1967–1969)
The Beatles' 1967 album ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26May 1967, ''Sgt. Pepper'' is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the roles of sound composi ...
'' is identified by ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' assistant editor Andy Greene as marking "the beginning of the album era",
a reference echoed by Scott Plagenhoef of ''
Pitchfork'';
Greene adds that "it was the
big bang
The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...
of albums".
[Chris Kokenes]
A Day in the Life' Lyrics to be Auctioned."
CNN.com
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
. April 30, 2010. Retrieved January 5, 2014. Chuck Eddy refers to the "high album era" as beginning with ''Sgt. Pepper''.
Its release in May 1967 coincided with the emergence of dedicated
rock criticism in the US and intellectuals seeking to position pop albums as valid cultural works.
Music historian Simon Philo writes that, aside from the level of critical acclaim it received, "the record's
ommercialsuccess ushered in the era of
album-oriented rock
Album-oriented rock (AOR, originally called album-oriented radio) is an FM radio format created in the United States in the 1970s that focuses on the full repertoire of rock albums and is currently associated with classic rock.
Album-oriente ...
, radically reshaping how pop music worked economically." Reinforcing its creative ambition, ''Sgt. Pepper'' was packaged in a gatefold sleeve with a lyric sheet, typifying a trend whereby musicians now commissioned associates from the art world to design their LP sleeves and presented their albums to the record company for release.
Greg Kot
Greg Kot (born March 3, 1957) is an American music journalist and author. From 1990 until 2020, Kot was the rock music critic at the ''Chicago Tribune'', where he covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and busines ...
said ''Sgt. Pepper'' introduced a template for both producing album-oriented rock and consuming it, "with listeners no longer twisting the night away to an assortment of three-minute singles, but losing themselves in a succession of 20-minute album sides, taking a journey led by the artist."
Because of its cohesive musical aesthetic, it is often regarded as a concept album.
Spearheaded by ''Sgt. Pepper'', 1967 saw a greater output of artistically innovative and renowned rock albums from flourishing music scenes in both the US and the UK. These were often accompanied by popular singles and included the Stones' ''
Between the Buttons
''Between the Buttons'' is the fifth British and seventh American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 20 January 1967 in the UK and on 11 February in the US as the follow-up to ''Aftermath''. It reflected the St ...
'' (with the two-sided single "
Ruby Tuesday"/"
Let's Spend the Night Together"),
Cream
Cream is a dairy product composed of the higher-fat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization. In un-homogenized milk, the fat, which is less dense, eventually rises to the top. In the industrial production of cream, this process ...
's ''
Disraeli Gears'' (featuring the band's most well-known song "
Sunshine of Your Love
"Sunshine of Your Love" is a 1967 song by the British rock band Cream. With elements of hard rock, psychedelia, and pop, it is one of Cream's best known and most popular songs. Cream bassist and vocalist Jack Bruce based it on a distinctive b ...
"), and the Who's ''
The Who Sell Out
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'', which included hits like "
I Can See for Miles
"I Can See for Miles" is a song by the English rock band the Who, recorded for the band's 1967 album ''The Who Sell Out''. Written by guitarist Pete Townshend, it was the only song from the album to be released as a single.
Recording
Recorded ...
" in the framework of a concept album satirizing commercialism and radio.
Meanwhile,
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most ...
's "
Purple Haze
"Purple Haze" is a song written by Jimi Hendrix and released as the second single by the Jimi Hendrix Experience on March 17, 1967.
The song features his inventive guitar playing, which uses the signature Hendrix chord and a mix of blues and Ea ...
" (1967) was released as the "debut single of the Album Rock Era", according to
Dave Marsh
Dave Marsh (born March 1, 1950) is an American music critic, and radio talk show host. He was an early editor of ''Creem'' magazine, has written for various publications such as ''Newsday'', ''The Village Voice'', and ''Rolling Stone (magazine), ...
. Danesi cites the Beatles' 1968
White Album
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
alongside ''Sgt. Pepper'' as part of the era's emergence.
Shuker cites ''
We're Only in It for the Money
''We're Only in It for the Money'' is the third studio album by American rock band the Mothers of Invention, released on March 4, 1968, by Verve Records. As with the band's first two efforts, it is a concept album, and satirizes left- and righ ...
'' (1967) by
the Mothers of Invention
The Mothers of Invention (also known as The Mothers) was an American rock band from California. Formed in 1964, their work is marked by the use of sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows.
Originally an R&B band ...
and ''
Arthur, or Decline of the British Empire'' (1969) by
the Kinks as subsequent concept albums, while noting a subset of the form in
rock operas such as
Pretty Things
The Pretty Things were an English band formed in September 1963 in Sidcup, Kent. They took their name from Willie Dixon's 1955 song "Pretty Thing". A pure rhythm and blues band in their early years, with several singles charting in the Unite ...
' ''
S.F. Sorrow
''S. F. Sorrow'' is the fourth album by the English rock band Pretty Things. Released in 1968, it is known as one of the first rock operas ever released. Based on a short story by singer Phil May, the album is structured as a song cycle tell ...
'' (1968) and the Who's ''
Tommy
Tommy may refer to:
People
* Tommy (given name)
* Tommy Atkins, or just Tommy, a slang term for a common soldier in the British Army
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Tommy'' (1931 film), a Soviet drama film
* ''Tommy'' (1975 fil ...
'' (1969).
According to
Neil Strauss
Neil Darrow Strauss, also known by the pen names Style and Chris Powles, is an American author, journalist and ghostwriter. He is best known for his book '' The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists'', in which he describes his ...
, the "album-rock era" began in the late 1960s and ultimately encompassed LP records by both rock and non-rock artists.
According to
Ron Wynn
Ron Wynn is a music critic, author, and AllMusic editor. Wynn was the editor of the first edition of '' The All Music Guide to Jazz'' (1994), and from 1993 to 1994 served as the jazz and rap editor of the ''All Music Guide''. Wynn is the former e ...
, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
Isaac Hayes
Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008) was an American singer, actor, songwriter, and composer. He was one of the creative forces behind the Southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwri ...
helped bring
soul music
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became po ...
into "the concept album era" with his 1969 album ''
Hot Buttered Soul'', which succeeded commercially and introduced more experimental structures and arrangements to the genre. Also among soul singers,
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
cites Redding as one of the genre's "few reliable long-form artists" (with ''Otis Blue'' being his "first great album"),
as well as
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin ( ; March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the " Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in ''Rolling Stone''s "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With ...
and her series of four "classic" LPs for
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...
, from ''
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
''I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You'' is the tenth studio album by American singer Aretha Franklin released on March 10, 1967, by Atlantic Records. It was Franklin's first release under her contract with the label, following her departure f ...
'' (1967) to ''
Aretha Now'' (1968), which he says established an "aesthetic standard" of "rhythmic stomp and catchy songs". This series is compared by Christgau to similarly "prolific" runs from the Beatles, the Stones, and Dylan in the same decade, as well as subsequent runs by
Al Green
Albert Leornes Greene (born April 13, 1946), better known as Al Green, is an American singer, songwriter, pastor and record producer best known for recording a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including " Take Me to the River", ...
and
Parliament-Funkadelic. The Rolling Stones' four-album run beginning in the late 1960s with ''
Beggars Banquet
''Beggars Banquet'' is the 7th British and 9th American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 6 December 1968 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States. It was the first Ro ...
'' (1968) and ''
Let It Bleed'' (1969) – and concluding with ''
Sticky Fingers'' (1971) and ''
Exile on Main St.
''Exile on Main St.'' is the 10th British and 12th American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 12 May 1972 by Rolling Stones Records. Recording began in 1969 in England during sessions for ''Sticky Fingers'' a ...
'' (1972) – is also highly regarded, with the cultural historian Jack Hamilton calling it "one of the great sustained creative peaks in all of popular music".
1970s: Golden age of the LP
The period from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s was the era of the LP and the "golden era" of the album. According to
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002 's ''When Albums Ruled the World'' (2013), "These were the years when the music industry exploded to become bigger than
Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood, ...
."
"The album era had ushered in the notion of the rock singer as an artist who is worth paying attention to for more than the length of a hit", Pareles later observed. "Performers could become vivid presences to their fans even when they weren't ubiquitous on the
Top 40
In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or " con ...
, and loyalties were formed that continue
to the
990sfor some performers of the 1960s and 1970s, from the Kinks to
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a ...
to
Sting
Sting may refer to:
* Stinger or sting, a structure of an animal to inject venom, or the injury produced by a stinger
* Irritating hairs or prickles of a stinging plant, or the plant itself
Fictional characters and entities
* Sting (Middle-eart ...
."
[ Among those who emerged in the 1970s was ]Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He has released 21 studio albums, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is an originat ...
, whom Powers calls "the quintessential album-era rock star" for how he "used the long-player form itself more powerfully over the arc of a career, not only to establish a world through song, but to inhabit an enduring persona".
Progressive rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...
and soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".
Etymology
The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...
musicians utilized highly conceptual album-oriented approaches in the 1970s. Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philo ...
released thematically conceptual and intricately produced LPs that reinvented standards in rock through the next decade, particularly with their 1973 album '' The Dark Side of the Moon''. The musician-producer Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...
emerged through prolific work that thoroughly utilized the format with progressively experimental approaches to rock, peaking throughout the album era with his solo recordings as well as albums produced for Roxy Music
Roxy Music are an English rock music, rock band formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry—who became the band's lead vocalist and principal songwriter—and bassist Graham Simpson (musician), Graham Simpson. The other longtime members are Phil Manzanera ...
, David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
, Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.[Talkin ...](_blank)
, and U2. Under Berry Gordy's leadership at the soul label Motown
Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on June 7, 1958, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of ''moto ...
, the singer-songwriters Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay Jr., who also spelled his surname as Gaye (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984), was an American singer and songwriter. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo ar ...
and Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris ( Judkins; May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, who is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, Pop musi ...
were given creative control to approach their albums more seriously in what had generally been a single-focused genre, leading to a series of innovative LPs from the two as the decade ensued. For their innovative work, Gaye and Wonder were the few exceptions in what Marc Hogan
Marc Hogan (born October 3, 1981) is an American journalist. He currently works as a senior staff writer at Pitchfork.
Hogan has been a music critic at Pitchfork since 2004. He has contributed to a number of other publications, including '' SPIN ...
of ''Pitchfork'' observes would become a predominantly white-male "rock-stuffed canon" during the album era, one that largely excluded works by female and African-American musicians.
According to Eric Olsen, Pink Floyd was "the most eccentric and experimental multi-platinum band of the album rock era", while the reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...
artist Bob Marley
Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements o ...
was "the only towering figure of the rock era not from America or the U.K." The 1970 Joni Mitchell
Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell ( Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American musician, producer, and painter. Among the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her sta ...
LP '' Ladies of the Canyon'' is commonly regarded as one of the album era's most important records. The productions of Bob Ezrin – who worked on 1970s albums by Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer whose career spans over five decades. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillot ...
and Kiss
A kiss is the touch or pressing of one's lips against another person or an object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely. Depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sexual attraction, ...
' ''Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...
'' (1976) – are also highlighted from this era. As music journalist James Campion writes, "The 1970s album era was perfectly suited to his cinematic approach. Its format, with its two sides, as if two acts in a play with an intermission, allows for a crucial arc in the storytelling." Along with the LP record, the 8-track tape was another format popular in the US in this period.[
Elaborating on the 1970s LP aesthetic, Campion identifies cultural and environmental factors that, in his mind, made the format ideal for young people during the decade. He describes the "solitary ambience" offered to listeners by the turntable and headphones, which "enveloped hemin intricate stereo panning, atmospheric sounds, and multilayered vocal trickery".] Warren Zanes
Warren Zanes is an American musician and writer who has been known as guitarist for The Del Fuegos, a solo artist, and the biographer of Tom Petty. A Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies, Zanes is the former vice president of education and public ...
regards the shrewd sequencing
In genetics and biochemistry, sequencing means to determine the primary structure (sometimes incorrectly called the primary sequence) of an unbranched biopolymer. Sequencing results in a symbolic linear depiction known as a sequence which succ ...
of LP tracks as "the album era's most under-recognized art". The popularity of recreational drugs and mood lamps at the time provided further settings for more focused listening experiences, as Campion notes: "This kept the listener rapt to each song: how one flowed into the other, their connecting lyrical content, and the melding of instrumentation."
In comparison to future generations, Campion explains that people growing up in the 1970s found greater value in album listening, in part because of their limited access to any other home entertainment appliance: "Many of them were unable to control the family television or even the kitchen radio. This led to prioritizing of the bedroom or upstairs den". Campion describes this setting as an "imagination capsule" for the era's listeners, who "locked away inside the headphone dreamscape, studying every corner of the 12-inch artwork and delving deeper into lyrical subtext, whether in ways intended by the artist or not". Other cultural influences of the time also informed the listening experiences, according to Campion, who cites the horror
Horror may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Genres
*Horror fiction, a genre of fiction
** Japanese horror, Japanese horror fiction
**Korean horror, Korean horror fiction
* Horror film, a film genre
*Horror comics, comic books focusing o ...
and science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
fantasies and imagery of comic books
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
, as well as advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
, propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
, and "the American promise of grandeur". In his analysis, Campion concludes: "As if sitting in their own theater of the mind... they were willing participants in the playful meandering of their rock-and-roll heroes." Adding to this observation, Pareles says, "Successive songs become a kind of narrative, held together by the image of and fantasies about the performer." As "listeners' affection and fascination... transferred from a hit song, or a string of hits, to the singer", particularly successful recording artists developed a "staying power" among audiences, according to Pareles.[
According to Hogan, with ''Sgt. Pepper'' having provided the impetus, the idea of a "concept album" became a marketing tool by the 1970s, as "no shortage of bands used the pretense of 'art' to sell tens of millions of records." Citing hugely successful albums like ''The Dark Side of the Moon'' for leading the trend, Hogan says "record sales spiraled upward" through the mid 1970s.] In 1974, "dollar sales of records and tapes in the United States reached an all-time high of $2.2 billion", according to the '' World Book Encyclopedia'', with pop and rock recordings making up two-thirds of all recorded music sales. However, the book attributes this partly to an increase in record prices over the year, while estimating the actual number of net LP sales had decreased from 280 million to 276 million copies and noting an increase in tape sales from 108 million to 114 million. As record companies concentrated their efforts toward pop and rock, releases in other genres like classical, jazz, and easy listening
Easy listening (including mood music) is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, n ...
were marginalized in the market. Many jazz artists during this period recorded crossover
Crossover may refer to:
Entertainment
Albums and songs
* ''Cross Over'' (Dan Peek album)
* ''Crossover'' (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles album), 1987
* ''Crossover'' (Intrigue album)
* ''Crossover'' (Hitomi Shimatani album)
* ''Crossover'' (Yoshino ...
LPs with pop-friendly songs in order to increase their record sales.
By 1977, album sales had begun "ticking downward", according to Hogan. Pareles attributes this decline to the developments of punk rock and disco
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric pia ...
in the late 1970s: "Punk returned the focus to the short and noisy song. Disco concentrated on the physical moment when a song makes a body move."[ Christgau similarly notes that "the singles aesthetic began to reassert itself with disco and punk", suggesting this ended the "High Album Era".] In a different analysis, historian Matthew Restall observes in this period popular acts struggling to sustain the high level of success afforded to their previous albums. Citing the disappointing receptions of Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...
's '' Blue Moves'' (1976) and Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band, formed in London in 1967. Fleetwood Mac were founded by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, before bassist John McVie joined the line-up for their epony ...
's '' Tusk'' (1979), Restall says, " heseare dramatic examples of how the recording artists of the great album era... suffered the receiving end of a horizon of expectations."
1980s–1990s: Competing formats, marketing tactics
Decline of LP records and other cultural shifts (1979–1987)
The fall of LP record sales at the end of the 1970s marked the end of the LP-driven "golden age",[ as the music industry faced competition from a commercial resurgence in the film industry and the popularity of arcade video games.] The success of MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
's music video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...
programming also reemphasized the single format in the 1980s and early 1990s. According to Pareles, it soon became apparent that, "after the album-rock era of the 1970s, MTV helped return the hit single to prominence as a pop marketing tool" and influenced record buyers' consuming habits toward more "disposable hits".[
Pop stars of the 1980s, such as Michael Jackson and ]Madonna
Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...
, were able to galvanize interest in their albums by releasing a single or music video to MTV. This led to the development of the modern album launch, intended to drive an album's marketing momentum for an extended period of time, ranging from many weeks and months to more than a year. "Over time, there became an unspoken (and, eventually, baked into the budget) checklist to releasing a major-label pop album", writes ''Vulture
A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. There are 23 extant species of vulture (including Condors). Old World vultures include 16 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to North and ...
'' journalist Justin Curto, who cites elements in this model to be an upbeat lead single, an attention-grabbing music video, press coverage, novel merchandise, and the announcement of a supporting concert tour. Dependent on outlets like MTV that exclusively played hit songs, record companies placed more pressure on recording acts to achieve instant commercial success and marketability. "The 1980s and 1990 brought record sales to new peaks while the performers themselves tended to flash and burn out", as Pareles chronicles.
At the turn of the 1980s, critics initially struggled to reconcile the rise of punk singles in their conceptions of the hierarchical LP canon. However, The Clash
The Clash were an English rock band formed in London in 1976 who were key players in the original wave of British punk rock. Billed as "The Only Band That Matters", they also contributed to the and new wave movements that emerged in the wa ...
's ''London Calling
''London Calling'' is the third studio album by English rock band the Clash. It was originally released as a double album in the United Kingdom on 14 December 1979 by CBS Records, and in the United States in January 1980 by Epic Records.
The C ...
'' (1979) and other punk LPs soon earned recognition in rankings of the greatest albums. As the decade ensued, Prince
A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. Th ...
, Kate Bush, and Public Enemy emerged as further exceptions in the predominantly white-male and rock-oriented canon of the album era. Hip hop artists also achieved a corresponding critical stature through a series of successful albums later in the decade. Starting with the May 1986 release of Run-DMC
Run-DMC (also spelled Run-D.M.C.) was an American hip hop group from Hollis, Queens, New York City, founded in 1983 by Joseph Simmons, Darryl McDaniels, and Jason Mizell. Run-DMC is regarded as one of the most influential acts in the history of ...
's '' Raising Hell'', which sold more than three million copies, these included the Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys were an American rap rock group from New York City, formed in 1978. The group was composed of Mike D, Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums), Adam Yauch, Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Ad-Rock, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (voca ...
' '' Licensed to Ill'' (1986), Boogie Down Productions' ''Criminal Minded
''Criminal Minded'' is the debut studio album by hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions, released on March 3, 1987 by B-Boy Records. It is considered a highly influential hip hop album and one of the first in the gangsta rap genre.
Since its rele ...
'' (1987), Public Enemy's '' Yo! Bum Rush the Show'' (1987), and Eric B. & Rakim's '' Paid in Full'' (1987). According to '' The Boombox'' writer Todd "Stereo" Williams, this initiated hip hop's "golden age" as well as the genre's own "album era" from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, during which "hip-hop albums would be the measuring stick by which most of the genre's greats would be judged". In response to rapidly developing trends in these latter decades of the album era, genres and formats were often renamed or regrouped, such as the categorization of earlier "pop/rock
Pop rock (also typeset as pop/rock) is a fusion genre with an emphasis on professional songwriting and recording craft, and less emphasis on attitude than rock music. Originating in the late 1950s as an alternative to normal rock and roll, earl ...
" music into the "classic rock
Classic rock is a US radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the mid 1990s, primar ...
" format.
Transition to cassettes and CDs (1984–1999)
During the 1980s, the album format consolidated its domination of the recorded music market, first with the emergence of the cassette.[ According to '' PC Mag'' columnist ]John C. Dvorak
John C. Dvorak (; born 1952) is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a regular columnist in a variety of magazines. He was vice president of Mevio ...
, "the album era had resulted in too many albums with only one good song on each of them, so cassettes let users do their own mixes", a trend expedited by the introduction of the Sony Walkman
Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...
in 1979. The introduction of the CD, along with the portable Discman
Discman was Sony's brand name for portable CD players. The first Discman, the Sony D-50 or D-5 (depending on region), was launched in 1984. The brand name changed to CD Walkman, initially for Japanese lineups launched between October 1997 and Ma ...
player in 1984, began the displacement of LPs in the 1980s as the standard album format for the music industry. According to Hogan, "the spread of cassettes and CDs in the '80s broke up the album with home taping
"Home Taping Is Killing Music" was the slogan of a 1980s anti-copyright infringement propaganda campaign by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a British music industry trade group. With the rise in cassette recorder popularity, the BPI fea ...
and easier song skipping". In 1987, the music industry experienced its most profitable year yet due to the CD's increased popularity, highlighted by marketing successes such as Jackson, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor whose career has spanned six decades. He is one of the most acclaimed songwriters in popular music, both as a solo artist and as half of folk roc ...
, Whitney Houston
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer and actress. Nicknamed "The Voice", she is one of the bestselling music artists of all time, with sales of over 200 million records worldwide. Houston in ...
, Sting
Sting may refer to:
* Stinger or sting, a structure of an animal to inject venom, or the injury produced by a stinger
* Irritating hairs or prickles of a stinging plant, or the plant itself
Fictional characters and entities
* Sting (Middle-eart ...
, Bon Jovi
Bon Jovi is an American Rock music, rock band formed in 1983 in Sayreville, New Jersey. It consists of singer Jon Bon Jovi, keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, guitarist Phil X, and bassist Hugh McDonald (American musician), Hugh McD ...
, and Def Leppard
Def Leppard are an English rock band formed in 1976 in Sheffield. Since 1992, the band has consisted of Rick Savage (bass, backing vocals), Joe Elliott (lead vocals), Rick Allen (drums, backing vocals), Phil Collen (guitar, backing vocals), a ...
, the latter two of whom represented a pop metal
Pop metal (sometimes conflated with or used interchangeably with glam metal) is an umbrella term for commercial heavy metal and hard rock styles which feature prominent pop music elements such as catchy hooks and anthemic choruses. It became ...
boom in the industry. While net unit sales had actually declined, Christgau reported in September 1987 that CDs were outpricing LP records and cassettes were outselling them, although the cassette would also eventually be displaced by the CD. In 1988, responding to the decade's developments, sociomusicologist Simon Frith
Simon Webster Frith (born 1946) is a British sociomusicologist and former rock critic who specializes in popular music culture. He is Tovey Chair of Music at University of Edinburgh.
Career
As a student, he read PPE at Oxford and earned a ...
predicted an imminent end to "the record era" and perhaps "pop music as we know it".
In the transition to CDs, well-regarded albums of the past were reissued on the format by their original record labels, or the label to whom the album's ownership had been transferred in the event of the original's closure, for instance. In 1987, the reissue of the Beatles' complete studio catalog was especially popular among consumers from the baby boomer generation, who were also the target audience of two classic-rock films – the Chuck Berry tribute ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll
''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll'' is a 1987 documentary film directed by Taylor Hackford that chronicles two 1986 concerts celebrating rock and roll musician Chuck Berry's 60th birthday. A soundtrack album was released in October 1987 on the MCA lab ...
'' and the Ritchie Valens biopic '' La Bamba'' (with its accompanying soundtrack) – and Elvis Presley compilations commemorating the 10th anniversary of his death. However, many older works were overlooked for digital rerelease "because of legal and contractual problems, as well as simple oversight", Strauss explains. Instead, such records were often rediscovered and collected through the crate digging
Record collecting is the hobby of collecting sound recordings, usually of music, but sometimes poetry, reading, historical speeches, and ambient noises. Although the typical focus is on vinyl records, all formats of recorded music can be collecte ...
practices of North American hip hop producers seeking rare sounds to sample
Sample or samples may refer to:
Base meaning
* Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set
* Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal
* Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of s ...
for their own recordings. In her account of the 1980s hip hop crate-diggers, media and culture theorist Elodie A. Roy writes, "As they trailed second-hand shops and car boot sale
Car boot sales or boot fairs are a form of market in which private individuals come together to sell household and garden goods. They are popular in the United Kingdom, where they are often referred to simply as 'car boots'.
Some scientific ...
s – depositories of unwanted capitalist surplus – diggers were bound to encounter realms of mainstream, mass-produced LP records now fallen out of grace and fashion." This development also contributed to the phenomenon of the "popular collector", which material culture
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...
scholar Paul Martin describes as those generally interested in "obtainable, affordable and appealing" items – such as music releases – and attributes to mass production
Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch ...
.
According to Pareles, after "the individual song returned as the pop unit" through the 1980s, record companies at the end of the decade began to abstain from releasing hit singles as a means of pressuring consumers to purchase the album on which the single featured.[ By the end of the 1980s, seven-inch vinyl single sales were dropping and almost entirely displaced by cassette singles, neither of which ultimately sold as well as albums.][ Album production proliferated in the 1990s, with Christgau approximating 35,000 albums worldwide were released each year during the decade. In 1991, ]Nirvana
( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...
's album ''Nevermind
''Nevermind'' is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991, by DGC Records. It was Nirvana's first release on a major label and the first to feature drummer Dave Grohl. Produced by Butch Vig, ''Neve ...
'' was released to critical acclaim and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, leading to an alternative rock
Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...
boom in the music industry. A simultaneous country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
boom led by Garth Brooks
Troyal Garth Brooks (born February 7, 1962) is an American country music singer and songwriter. His integration of pop and rock elements into the country genre has earned him popularity, particularly in the United States with success on the co ...
and Shania Twain
Eilleen Regina "Shania" Twain ( , ; née Edwards; born August 28, 1965) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She has sold over 100 million records, making her the best-selling female artist in country music history and one of the best-s ...
culminated with more than 75 million country albums sold in each of 1994 and 1995, by which time the rap market was also increasing rapidly, particularly through the success of controversial gangsta rap
Gangsta rap or gangster rap, initially called reality rap, emerged in the mid- to late 1980s as a controversial hip-hop subgenre whose lyrics assert the culture and values typical of American street gangs and street hustlers. Many gangsta rappe ...
acts such as Dr. Dre
Andre Romelle Young (born February 18, 1965), known professionally as Dr. Dre, is an American rapper and record producer. He is the founder and CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics, and previously co-founded, co-owned, and ...
and Snoop Dogg
Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. (born October 20, 1971), known professionally as Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg and briefly Snoop Lion), is an American rapper. His fame dates back to 1992 when he featured on Dr. Dre's debut solo single, " ...
. Meanwhile, single-song delivery of music to the consumer was almost nonexistent, at least in the US,[ and in 1998, ''Billboard'' ended the requirement of a physical single for inclusion on its ]Hot 100
The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming ...
singles chart after several of the year's major hits were not released as singles to consumers. In 1999, the music industry as a whole reached a commercial peak with $15 billion in record-sale revenue, mostly from CDs.
Nirvana's ''Nevermind'' is cited by Eddy as roughly the end of the "high album era", although Strauss wrote in 1995 that the "album-rock era" was still in effect. As another "ending point", Hogan says critics have often named Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...
's electronic-influenced 1997 album ''OK Computer
''OK Computer'' is the third studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in Japan on 21 May 1997 and in the UK on 16 June 1997. Radiohead self-produced the album with Nigel Godrich, an arrangement they have used for their subsequ ...
'', which progressed the boundaries of rock music while achieving a dual level of mainstream and critical success unmatched by any "guitar-based full-length" work in subsequent decades. Kot, meanwhile, observed a decline in integrity among the industry and artists. He suggested that consumers had been exploited through the 1990s by increasing prices of CD albums, which were less expensive to produce than vinyl records, and had longer run times with considerably lower-quality music. While acknowledging some recording acts still attempted to abide by ideals from earlier in the album era, he said most had renounced their responsibilities as artists and storytellers and embraced indulgent recording practices in order to profit from the CD boom.
2000s: Decline in the digital age, shift to pop and urban
At the turn of the 2000s, Kot published a faux obituary for the 33⅓ rpm LP form in the ''Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
''. In it, he argued that the LP had "been made obsolete by MP3 downloads, movie soundtracks and CD shufflers – not to mention video games, cable television, the Internet and the worldwide explosion of media that prey upon the attention spans of what used to be known as album buyers." In 1999, the Internet peer-to-peer file sharing
Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program tha ...
service Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn ...
allowed Internet users to easily download single songs in MP3 format, which had been ripped from the digital files located on CDs. Amidst Napster's rise in 2000, David Bowie predicted in an interview that the album era would end with the music industry's unavoidable embrace of digital music files. By early 2001, Napster use peaked with 26.4 million users worldwide. Although Napster was shut down later that year for copyright violations, several other music download
A music download (commonly referred to as a digital download) is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer, portable media player, MP3 player or smartphone. Thi ...
services took its place.
In 2001, Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
's iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
service was introduced, and the iPod
The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...
(a consumer-friendly MP3 player) was released later that year, soon to be joined by similar legal alternatives. This, along with a continued rise in illicit file sharing, led to a steep decline in the sales of recorded music on physical formats[ over the next three years.] Sales briefly recovered by the end of 2004 when the industry registered approximately 667 million albums sold, led with 8 million from '' Confessions'' by Usher
Usher may refer to:
Several jobs which originally involved directing people and ensuring people are in the correct place:
* Usher (occupation)
** Church usher
** Wedding usher, one of the male attendants to the groom in a wedding ceremony
** Fiel ...
, whose success exemplified urban music's commercial dominance of pop in the decade. Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclai ...
and 50 Cent
Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, and businessman. Born in the South Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, Jackson began pursuing a musical career in 2000, when he produced ...
were among the major-label successes of the rap boom that had continued from the previous decade. ''Confessions'' and Eminem's '' The Eminem Show'' (2002) would both be certified Diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...
by the Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...
, reaching 10 million copies sold each by the end of the decade.
The most innovative and culturally relevant records were also being produced in the urban genres of R&B, hip hop, and pop, including albums by Kanye West
Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer.
Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...
and D'Angelo
Michael Eugene Archer (born February 11, 1974), better known by his stage name D'Angelo (), is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. He first garnered attention after co-producing the single "U Will Know" ...
as well as the productions of Timbaland and the Neptunes
The Neptunes are an American songwriting and production duo composed of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, formed in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in 1992. Williams often provides additional vocals on records and appears in the duo's music videos, ...
. For critics, these works became another form of the full-length art pop records that had defined the album era with a rock guitar-based tradition, which was complicated further by the canonical acclaim afforded to Radiohead's electronic post-rock
Post-rock is a form of experimental rock characterized by a focus on exploring textures and timbre over traditional rock song structures, chords, or riffs. Post-rock artists are often instrumental, typically combining rock instrumentation with ...
album ''Kid A
''Kid A'' is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and their hometown of Oxford.
After th ...
'' (2000). Failing to match the landmark sales of ''OK Computer'', the most acclaimed rock albums of the early 2000s often revisited older sounds, as with the Strokes' ''Is This It
''Is This It'' is the debut studio album by American rock band the Strokes. It was first released on July 30, 2001, in Australia, with RCA Records handling the release internationally and Rough Trade Records handling the United Kingdom release. I ...
'' (2001), the White Stripes' ''White Blood Cells
White blood cells, also called leukocytes or leucocytes, are the cells of the immune system that are involved in protecting the body against both infectious disease and foreign invaders. All white blood cells are produced and derived from mult ...
'' (2001), and Interpol
The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...
's '' Turn on the Bright Lights'' (2002), or simply lacked Radiohead's extensive production and marketing budget, as in the case of Arcade Fire
Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band, consisting of husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, alongside Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury and Jeremy Gara. The band's current touring line-up also includes former core member S ...
's ''Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect th ...
'' (2004). These developments led to rock's commercial and cultural prestige diminishing and the critical paradigm shifting from rockism to poptimism in subsequent years.
Meanwhile, the music industry's ability to sell albums still faced threats from piracy and competing media, such as DVDs, video games, and single-song downloading. According to Nielsen SoundScan
Luminate (formerly Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen Music Products, and MRC Data) is a provider of music sales data. Established by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett in 1991, data is collected weekly and made available every Sunday (for albums sales) and eve ...
's data for 2004, digital tracks had sold more than 140 million copies at around 99 cents each from online vendors like iTunes, indicating that consumers preferred to download individual songs over the higher-priced album in its entirety. In 2006, CD sales were outnumbered for the first time by single downloads, with digital music consumers buying singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.[Jeff Leeds]
"The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor."
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. March 26, 2007. Retrieved January 5, 2014. By 2009, album sales had more than halved since 1999, declining from a $14.6 to $6.3 billion industry. Also by this time, dance-pop
Dance-pop is a popular music subgenre that originated in the late 1970s to early 1980s. It is generally uptempo music intended for nightclubs with the intention of being danceable but also suitable for contemporary hit radio. Developing from a ...
had succeeded urban music as the dominant genre on top 40 radio, with pop artists like Rihanna
Robyn Rihanna Fenty ( ; born February 20, 1988) is a Barbadian singer, actress, and businesswoman. Born in Saint Michael and raised in Bridgetown, Barbados, Rihanna auditioned for American record producer Evan Rogers who invited her to the ...
emerging during this period basing their careers on digital singles instead of album sales. Veteran rock acts like U2 prospered through the fall of album sales better than younger acts because of a loyal following that still held an attachment to the format. "Children of the album era as they were, U2 would never stop regarding the album as the core statement of their creativity" despite progressively lower sales, says Mat Snow, noting that live shows consequently became their greatest source of revenue.
With the rise of digital media
Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...
in the 2000s, the "popular collector" of physical albums had transitioned to the "digital" and "electronic" collector. Of such collectors, Roy says it can be argued they are "not equipped with sufficient archiving knowledge or tools to preserve his/her collection in the long run", citing the vulnerable shelf life of digital files. Concurrently, the demise of physical music stores allowed for websites to emerge as domains for album collecting, including the music review database AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
, the streaming service Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...
, and Discogs
Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...
, which began as a music database before developing into an online marketplace for physical music releases.
The phrase "death of the album" was used in the media during the decline, usually attributing it to Internet sharing and downloading, and the changing expectations of music listeners. Capitol-EMI
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...
's COO Jeff Kempler said in 2007 that fewer artists will pursue album-oriented campaigns, while media researcher Aram Sinnreich bluntly predicted the album's death with consumers listening to playlists on their MP3 players instead.[ In an interview several years later, Lee Phillips of the Californian entertainment law firm ]Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP is a Los Angeles-based law firm of more than 450 attorneys and other professionals founded in 1965. The firm earned revenues of $316.9 million in 2017. Donna L. Wilson is the firm's Chief Executive and Managing Part ...
believed the album era had ended and blamed record companies for failing to recognize the inevitability of streaming as the favored means of music distribution and for not working with Napster on a solution.
2010s–present: post-album era and the streaming age
Music industry insiders and writers in the 2010s, such as Jon Caramanica
Jon Caramanica (born 1975) is an American journalist and pop music critic who writes for ''The New York Times''. He is also known for writing about hip hop music.
Biography
Born in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York, Caramanica received his ba ...
and Kevin Whitehead
Kevin Francis Whitehead (born April 27, 1952 in New York City) is an American jazz critic and author.
Biography
Whitehead studied at Oswego State University in New York, then earned a Masters in American Literature and Culture at Syracuse Univers ...
, have described this period in the album's history as the "post-album era". Over the course of the decade, record labels generally invested in streaming platforms such as Spotify and Pandora Radio
Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the "Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying indiv ...
, with strategies focused on curated playlists and individual tracks rather than albums. Spotify in particular became a dominant and redefining platform for music consumption during the 2010s. Reporting later in the decade for ''Deseret News
The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...
'', Court Mann said that "services like Spotify and Apple Music
Apple Music is a music, audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio stations Apple M ...
have moved our usiclibraries off personal hard drives, iPods and CDs, and into the cloud. Our music is decreasingly self-contained and private." In 2011, net album sales in the US rose for the first time since 2004 – with some writers attributing it to Adele's 2011 sleeper hit
In the entertainment industry, a sleeper hit is a film, television series, music release, video game, or some other entertainment product that was initially unsuccessful on release but became a success later on. A sleeper hit may have little promo ...
'' 21'' (at 5.8 million units and more than three million CDs sold by January 2012) – but continued to fall again the next year. With consumers abandoning albums, more performers focused on releasing singles, a trend which critics felt undermined their artistic potential and produced many one-hit wonder
A one-hit wonder or viral hit is any entity that achieves mainstream popularity, often for only one piece of work, and becomes known among the general public solely for that momentary success. The term is most commonly used in regard to music p ...
s.[Tejas Morey]
"How iTunes Changed The Music Industry Forever."
''MensXP (Times of India
''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English language, English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the List of newspapers in India by circulation, t ...
)''. Retrieved January 5, 2014. However critics, who had primarily written reviews of albums during the format's era of dominance, had also begun reviewing single songs.
While the album format was "dead" commercially, high-profile artists such as U2, the 1975, Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bor ...
, and Katy Perry
Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television personality. Known for her influence on modern pop music and her Camp (style), campy style, she has been ...
still presented their work within a self-defined "album era", says Peter Robinson of ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''. Such artists presented their project's aesthetic lifetime in the style of themed album campaigns by past acts like Bowie, Madonna, and Pet Shop Boys
The Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of primary vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 50 million records worldwide, and were listed as the most successful duo i ...
. Albums were marketed in extravagant, performance art
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
-like product launch
In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design, along wi ...
es that reached "a nadir" in 2013, according to ''Vulture'' writer Lindsay Zoladz, who cites the failed attempts of acts such as Kanye West, Arcade Fire, and Lady Gaga
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( ; born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga began performing as a teenag ...
at using visual art and public settings in the strategy: "Gaga's comically excessive '' ARTPOP'' campaign featured a Jeff Koons sculpture and a press conference in which she unveiled 'VOLANTIS, the world's first flying dress'; Daft Punk
Daft Punk were a French electronic music duo formed in 1993 in Paris by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Widely regarded as one of the most influential acts in dance music history, they achieved popularity in the late 1990s as p ...
recorded endless '' VH1 Classic Albums''–esque promotional spots that memorialized '' Random Access Memories'' before anybody had even heard it... and then who could forget errydriving through the streets of L.A. in a gilded 18-wheeler
A semi-trailer truck, also known as a semitruck, (or semi, eighteen-wheeler, big rig, tractor-trailer or, by synecdoche, a semitrailer) is the combination of a tractor unit and one or more semi-trailers to carry freight. A semi-trailer a ...
that screamed KATY PERRY PRISM
Prism usually refers to:
* Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light
* Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron
Prism may also refer to:
Science and mathematics
* Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...
10-22-13 and looked, uncannily, like a ten-ton brick of Cracker Barrel cheese?" Despite this, Swift remained the music industry's leading adherent and meticulous planner of album-era campaigns through the decade, creating a distinctive art of the strategy, in Curto's opinion.
By the mid 2010s, popular recording artists had embraced the surprise album as a release strategy, issuing their albums with little or no prior announcement and promotion, in part as a way of combatting Internet leaks. This strategy was predated by Radiohead and Bowie but popularized by Beyoncé
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ...
with her self-titled album in 2013, leading to what Zoladz in 2015 called the "current surprise-album era". The following year, the singer repeated the strategy with her '' Lemonade'' album and again proved "the ''Zeitgeist
In 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy, a ''Zeitgeist'' () ("spirit of the age") is an invisible agent, force or Daemon dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history.
Now, the term is usually associated with Georg W. F. ...
'' could be captured and held in just one night", as Curto explains. However, Zoladz went on to report a "collective fatigue" among professional critics and casual listeners from staying connected with surprise releases and the social-media news cycle
The 24-hour news cycle (or 24/7 news cycle) is 24-hour investigation and reporting of news, concomitant with fast-paced lifestyles. The vast news resources available in recent decades have increased competition for audience and advertiser attent ...
surrounding them. She also noted Drake
Drake may refer to:
Animals
* A male duck
People and fictional characters
* Drake (surname), a list of people and fictional characters with the family name
* Drake (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* ...
's ability to sustain his popular appeal over time more with single-track releases and thus mastering the digital age's "desire for both instant gratification and long-term anticipation". The latter half of the 2010s trended toward similarly minimal marketing for hip hop album releases, with announcements in the form of social media posts unveiling only the cover art, track listing, or release date a few weeks prior at the most.
Other critics still believed in the album as a viable concept in the 21st century. In 2003, '' Wired'' magazine had assigned Christgau to write an article discussing if the album was "a dying art form", to which he concluded: "For as long as artists tour, they'll peddle song collections with the rest of the merch, and those collections will be conceived as artfully as the artists possibly can." In 2019, as CD and digital download sales plummeted and theories still persisted about the "death" of the physical album format, Christgau found his original premise even more valid. "Because the computer giveth as the computer taketh away", he wrote in an essay accompanying the Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abse ...
music poll that year, explaining that the current affordability of adequate recording equipment makes album production accessible to musicians of various levels of competence. Regarding professional acts, he said, "Writing songs is in their DNA, and if said songs are any good at all, recording them for posterity soon becomes irresistible."
In a year-ending essay on the album in 2019, Ann Powers wrote for ''Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' that the year found the format in a state of "metamorphosis" rather than dead. In her observation, many recording artists had revitalized the concept album around autobiographical narratives and personal themes, such as intimacy, intersectionality, African-American life, boundaries among women, and grief associated with death. She cited such albums as Brittany Howard's ''Jaime
Jaime is a common Spanish and Portuguese male given name for Jacob (name), James (name), Jamie, or Jacques. In Occitania Jacobus became ''Jacome'' and later ''Jacme''. In east Spain, ''Jacme'' became ''Jaime'', in Aragon it became ''Chaime'', and i ...
'', Raphael Saadiq's '' Jimmy Lee'', Rapsody's ''Eve
Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...
'', Jenny Lewis' '' On the Line'', and Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ca ...
's '' Ghosteen''. Writing contemporaneously, arts and culture journalist Michelle Zipkin believed albums are still "an integral, relevant, and celebrated component of musical creation and artistry". She cited the review aggregator Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
's tabulation of the most acclaimed albums from the 2010s, which showcased musicianship from a diverse range of artists and often serious themes, such as grief, race relations
Race relations is a sociological concept that emerged in Chicago in connection with the work of sociologist Robert E. Park and the Chicago race riot of 1919. Race relations designates a paradigm or field in sociology and a legal concept in the ...
, and identity politics, while adding that, "Albums today offer a fresh way of approaching a changing industry".
By 2019, Swift remained the only artist "who still sells CDs" and had yet to embrace streaming services because they had not compensated recording artists fairly, according to ''Quartz''. Elaborating on this point, ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' critic Mikael Wood said, "Yet as she kept her music off Spotify – conditioning her loyal audience to think of buying her songs and albums as an act of devotion – younger artists like /nowiki> Grande">riana/nowiki> Grande emerged to establish themselves as streaming favorites." However, Swift used all major streaming services to release her 2019 album ''Lover
Lover or lovers may refer to a person having a sexual or romantic relationship with someone outside marriage. In this context see:
* Sexual partner
* Mistress (lover)
* Extramarital sex
* Premarital sex
Lover or Lovers may also refer to:
Geogr ...
'', which ''Quartz'' said "might be the last CD we buy" and was "perhaps a final death note for the CD".
International trends
By the mid 2010s, physical CD and vinyl sales made up 39% of global music sales. Out of total music sales in the US ( the world's largest music market in terms of revenue), less than 25% were physical copies, while France and the UK both registered around 30–40% in this same statistic. However, that figure was approximately 60% for Germany and 75% for Japan, which had the world's second largest market with more than ¥254 billion (or $2.44 billion) sold per year in music recordings, most of them in the form of CDs. Both countries led the world in physical music sales partly because of their cultures' mutual affinity for "physical objects", according to ''Quartz'' journalist Mun Keat Looi.
The Japanese industry had especially favored the CD format, due in part to its ease of manufacturing, distributing, and pricing control. In 2016, Japan had 6,000 physical music stores, leading the US (approximately 1,900) and Germany (700) for most in the world. Despite broadband Internet
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
being available in Japan since 2000, consumers had resisted the change to downloaded and streamed consumption, which made up 8% of the country's total music revenue, compared to 68% in the US market. While singles in Western countries had been antiquated for more than a decade, Japan's market for them endured largely because of the immense popularity of idol entertainers, boy band
A boy band is loosely defined as a vocal group consisting of young male singers, usually in their teenage years or in their twenties at the time of formation. Generally, boy bands perform Love song, love songs marketed towards girls and young ...
s, and girl group
A girl group is a music act featuring several female singers who generally harmonize together. The term "girl group" is also used in a narrower sense in the United States to denote the wave of American female pop music singing groups, many of who ...
s. Capitalizing on the fandom
A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant ...
surrounding these performers, record companies and marketing agencies exploited the merchandising aspect of CDs with promotional gimmicks, such as releasing various editions of a single album, including them with tickets to artist events, and counting CD-single purchases as fan votes toward popularity contests for artists. The focus went away from the music and toward the fan experience of connectivity with a favorite idol, according to ''The Japan Times
''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo.
History
''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...
'' correspondent Ronald Taylor.
Japan's unusual consumer behavior in the recorded music market was an example of the Galápagos syndrome, a business concept framed after Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's evolutionary theory. According to Looi, it explains how the country's innovative but isolationist
Isolationism is a political philosophy advocating a national foreign policy that opposes involvement in the political affairs, and especially the wars, of other countries. Thus, isolationism fundamentally advocates neutrality and opposes entangl ...
character had resulted in "a love for a technology that the rest of the world has all but forgotten". On the enduring commercial popularity of CDs there, global music analyst Mark Mulligan explained that Japan's purchasing power and consumer demand had been concentrated among its rapidly aging population
Population ageing is an increasing median age in a population because of declining fertility rates and rising life expectancy. Most countries have rising life expectancy and an ageing population, trends that emerged first in developed countries b ...
who were more likely to follow veteran idols like the boy band Arashi
is a Japanese boy band consisting of five members formed under the Johnny & Associates talent agency. The members are Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya, and Jun Matsumoto. Arashi officially formed on September 15, 1999 ...
and the singer-songwriter Masaharu Fukuyama, while less concentrated among young people attuned to digital and streaming services. However, the mid 2010s also saw an increase in digital music and subscription sales, indicating a trend away from physical purchases in the country.
In 2019, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a non-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland and founded in Italy in 19 ...
(IFPI) reported among the world's top-10 recorded music markets to be Japan, China, South Korea, and Australia, while noting an emergence of markets outside the West in general, including those in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The report also observed a shift away from the global dominance of popular English-language acts and toward regional successes with cross-cultural appeal, such as BTS
BTS (), also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a South Korean boy band formed in 2010 and debuting in 2013 under Big Hit Entertainment. The septet—consisting of members Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook—co-writes and co-produ ...
and J Balvin, due in part to a more open-minded consumer culture and social connectivity between artists and listeners. While top recording artists from the West continued to rely on traditional roles from major labels, others utilized digital service providers such as Spotify and Apple Music to either self-release their recordings or release them in partnership with an independent distributor.
Pandemic period
In 2020, album launches were hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
and its related social distancing measures. Between March 6 and 12, physical album sales fell 6% due in part to the pandemic. Later that month, Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
temporarily suspended incoming shipments of music CDs and vinyl records from US suppliers in an effort to prioritize items deemed more essential. The pandemic's closure of physical retailers and distribution systems impacted veteran recording acts especially, as their fans tended to be older and more likely to still purchase CDs and vinyl records. Consequently, many such acts who still adhered to a traditional rollout model, such as Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American country musician. The critical success of the album ''Shotgun Willie'' (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of ''Red Headed Stranger'' (1975) and '' Stardust'' (197 ...
and Alicia Keys
Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), known professionally as Alicia Keys, is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. A classically trained pianist, Keys started composing songs when she was 12 and was signed at 15 years old by Col ...
, delayed their album releases. Reporting on the development in March, ''Rolling Stone'' journalist Elias Leight explained:
Some major pop stars reimagined their release strategies during the pandemic. Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bor ...
surprise-released her albums ''Folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
'' and '' Evermore'' in July and December 2020, respectively, abandoning a proper rollout campaign for the first time in her career, and setting several sales and streaming records. Ariana Grande, more inspired by rap release strategies, released her album '' Positions'' (2020) with similarly minimal announcement and promotion. The success of both artists during the pandemic came while more established pop stars had planned traditional album launches, including Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa ( , ; born ) is an English and Albanian singer and songwriter. Possessing a mezzo-soprano vocal range, she is known for her signature disco- pop sound. Lipa has received numerous accolades, including six Brit Awards, three Gramm ...
. Keys also surprise-released her album '' Alicia'' after an indefinite delay due to the pandemic. Concurrently, rap albums benefited further from the period's more on-demand consumer and streaming culture, with rappers such as Lil Uzi Vert
Symere Bysil Woods ( ; born July 31, 1995), known professionally as Lil Uzi Vert, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. They are characterized by their face tattoo, facial tattoos, facial piercings, eccentric hairstyles and androgynous ...
, Bad Bunny, and DaBaby topping album charts.
2020 proved the most successful year for vinyl albums in MRC Data
Luminate (formerly Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen Music Products, and MRC Data) is a provider of music sales data. Established by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett in 1991, data is collected weekly and made available every Sunday (for albums sales) and eve ...
history (since 1991), with 27.5 million sold in the US. In June 2021, ''Billboard'' reported that net physical album sales had risen for the first time in years due to the pandemic. Pop and hip hop/R&B artists gained more sales than ever in the US vinyl market, while rock records experienced a decline despite accounting for more than half of the market's total sales. Among the year's top vinyl sellers were Harry Styles
Harry Edward Styles (born 1 February 1994) is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His musical career began in 2010 as a solo contestant on the British music competition series ''The X Factor (UK TV series), The X Factor''. Following hi ...
, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, and Swift, whose ''Evermore'' led sales of both CDs and vinyl albums released in 2021.
Reporting on music release trends during the pandemic, writers observed that they offered a greater connectivity for artists with their listeners during a paradigm-shifting period while empowering both groups at the expense of major labels. However, Oliver Tryon of the music webzine ''CULTR'' argues that the music industry remains one of the most profitable markets worldwide and has capitalized on changing trends in the streaming age, including the increasing brevity of songs, diminishing genre distinctions among artists, and innovations in electronic music technology, such as the application of artificial intelligence in music. On developments in 2021, Tryon predicted that regional releases from around the world would rise in the global market and " generative music" would "rise as a result of contextual playlists", while albums in general would "continue to decline as the post-album era is becoming more prominent".
See also
* Album-equivalent unit
*Cultural impact of the Beatles
The English rock band the Beatles are commonly regarded as the foremost and most influential band in popular music history. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they sparked the "Beatlemania" p ...
*List of best-selling albums
This is a list of the world's best-selling albums of recorded music. To appear on the list, the figure must have been published by a reliable source and the album must have sold at least 20 million copies. This list can contain any types of al ...
*List of best-selling albums by country
The following is a list of best-selling albums by country. Depends on the measurement, record sales of albums are taken by estimations or certifications.
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bolivia
Brazil
Burk ...
*List of best-selling music artists
The following list of best-selling music artists includes those music acts from the 20th century to the present with claims of 75 million or more record sales worldwide. This information cannot be listed officially, as there is no organization t ...
*Vinyl revival
Vinyl may refer to:
Chemistry
* Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a particular vinyl polymer
* Vinyl cation, a type of carbocation
* Vinyl group, a broad class of organic molecules in chemistry
* Vinyl polymer, a group of polymers derived from vinyl m ...
Notes
References
Further reading
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External links
''Albumism''
– online magazine dedicated to album-related content
{{Music industry
Recorded music
Music industry
Popular music
1960s in music
1970s in music
1980s in music
1990s in music
2000s in music
2010s in music
2020s in music
Era
An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth.
Compa ...