New York Times – March 26, 2007:

Now that the three young women in Candy Hill, a glossy rap and R&B trio, have signed a record contract, they are hoping for stardom. On the schedule: shooting a music video and visiting radio stations to talk up their music.

Acts like Cherry Hill — made up of Vatana Shaw, seated; Casha Darjean, standing left; and Ociris Gomez — face a new music economics.

But the women do not have a CD to promote. Universal/Republic Records, their label, signed Candy Hill to record two songs, not a complete album.

“If we get two songs out, we get a shot,” said Vatana Shaw, 20, who formed the trio four years ago, “Only true fans are buying full albums. Most people don’t really do that anymore.”

To the regret of music labels everywhere, she is right: fans are buying fewer and fewer full albums. In the shift from CDs to digital music, buyers can now pick the individual songs they like without having to pay upward of $10 for an album.

“I think the album is going to die,” said Aram Sinnreich, managing partner at Radar Research, a media consulting firm based in Los Angeles. “Consumers are listening to play lists,” or mixes of single songs from an assortment of different artists. “Consumers who have had iPods since they were in the single digits are going to increasingly gravitate toward artists who embrace that.”

I’m old enough to remember when music stores (we called them record stores back then) sold both albums (we called them LPs) and singles (we called them 45s). Stores had huge shelves of 45s featuring hits spanning decades. You could get nearly any hit single you wanted, but if they didn’t have it in stock, they’d order it and have it in a few days. Back then no one was forced to buy an entire LP to get the hit song they wanted.

The “death” of the album should have been expected to come, if the music industry had any foresight at all. This is the first time in decades music buyers have had a choice. There has always been genres of music that were suited for singles (e.g., disco) and genres that were suited for albums (e.g., opera). It was with the advent of the CD back in the 80s that the music industry attempted to kill off the single and force us to buy entire albums to get the one or two songs we wanted.

I don’t think albums are really going to die. The music that is better suited for temporary mass consumption will continue to thrive as singles while music that is better suited for repeated in depth listenings will thrive as albums.