MR

Should artists only allow complete albums or Industry selected singles to be downloaded digitally or should the consumer be allowed to only download what he likes whether it be ten songs or one from any particular album?

Groups like the Eagles have been very vocal about not having their albums being offered as individual tracks on iTunes. If more artists follow the Eagle's lead, would this lead to more piracy as an answer to the consumer losing the ability to buy self selected tracks?

I absolutely love albums. I think that when you put on a good record and can immerse yourself in it for 45 or so minutes I can be downright magical. Problem is too many artists cannot put together a strong album.

It is best for everybody to be able to download or purchase what they want. If they want one, two, or four song they should be able to do so. If they want the album they can get that too. It also puts pressure on the artist to produce a more complete project.

A lot of the pop/teen bands in the past will pay big money to a songwriters for 2 or 3 good songs that they can release as singles and then by cheap filler material for the remaining 7-8 songs.

People who write the majority of their own material will produce better and more consistent material.

Gunbot wrote:Should artists only allow complete albums or Industry selected singles to be downloaded digitally or should the consumer be allowed to only download what he likes whether it be ten songs or one from any particular album?

Groups like the Eagles have been very vocal about not having their albums being offered as individual tracks on iTunes. If more artists follow the Eagle's lead, would this lead to more piracy as an answer to the consumer losing the ability to buy self selected tracks?

If artists gonna switch over to albums only I think it will affect them in a negative way. Back in the day when I would buy an album, it usually had 8 good songs and 2 not so good songs,,, these days you get probably 5 good songs and the rest is usually garbage,,,,

Could EPs make a comeback? Yearly releases of four or five songs only?

Gunbot wrote:Should artists only allow complete albums or Industry selected singles to be downloaded digitally or should the consumer be allowed to only download what he likes whether it be ten songs or one from any particular album?

Groups like the Eagles have been very vocal about not having their albums being offered as individual tracks on iTunes. If more artists follow the Eagle's lead, would this lead to more piracy as an answer to the consumer losing the ability to buy self selected tracks?

With the Eagles last album, it was pretty damned boring and I cannot believe it sold the way it did.
I've tried to get through it 3 times now and I can't. It's terrible.

You'd hope that letting people download individual tracks would push the artist to produce better tracks that people would WANT to download or that it would push the bands to produce a better album that people would want to download.

I think bands should offer individual downloadable tracks. There are bands that have rabid fans, there are bands that have casual fans. By The Eagles doing that, they're pushing away the casual fan that might listen to an individual track and think "this is really good, wonder what the rest of their stuff is like?" and then they would go download more tracks and possibly albums. By not giving them access to individual tracks, they've cut the casual fan out of it.

I think they should also offer tracks that aren't available on albums including all live shows. I know that after I go to a show, it would be great to have a recording of that very show. Some bands do this and I think it's been pretty successful for them. It also doesn't cost the bands much at all.

Regarding this subject, Perry wouldn't let you download the bonus tracks from his last compilation. That sucks because I already have all of the other tracks from buying the original albums and the CD+5 singles and the other compilation that he did. Did that make me purchase the entire new album just to get those other tracks? Nope. I took it as a big FU to those that bought the albums originally and so I don't have those tracks. If I find them posted illegally, I'll download them, but I'm not going to buy stuff I already have.

Greatest Hits albums should be outlawed. Hate them.

brywool wrote:

Gunbot wrote:Should artists only allow complete albums or Industry selected singles to be downloaded digitally or should the consumer be allowed to only download what he likes whether it be ten songs or one from any particular album?

Groups like the Eagles have been very vocal about not having their albums being offered as individual tracks on iTunes. If more artists follow the Eagle's lead, would this lead to more piracy as an answer to the consumer losing the ability to buy self selected tracks?

With the Eagles last album, it was pretty damned boring and I cannot believe it sold the way it did.
I've tried to get through it 3 times now and I can't. It's terrible.

You'd hope that letting people download individual tracks would push the artist to produce better tracks that people would WANT to download or that it would push the bands to produce a better album that people would want to download.

I think bands should offer individual downloadable tracks. There are bands that have rabid fans, there are bands that have casual fans. By The Eagles doing that, they're pushing away the casual fan that might listen to an individual track and think "this is really good, wonder what the rest of their stuff is like?" and then they would go download more tracks and possibly albums. By not giving them access to individual tracks, they've cut the casual fan out of it.

I think they should also offer tracks that aren't available on albums including all live shows. I know that after I go to a show, it would be great to have a recording of that very show. Some bands do this and I think it's been pretty successful for them. It also doesn't cost the bands much at all.

Regarding this subject, Perry wouldn't let you download the bonus tracks from his last compilation. That sucks because I already have all of the other tracks from buying the original albums and the CD+5 singles and the other compilation that he did. Did that make me purchase the entire new album just to get those other tracks? Nope. I took it as a big FU to those that bought the albums originally and so I don't have those tracks. If I find them posted illegally, I'll download them, but I'm not going to buy stuff I already have.

Greatest Hits albums should be outlawed. Hate them.

the long road to eden i think was the name of it.i use it nightly as a way to induce sleep.xanax didn't work,valium,benadryl,tylenol pm,etc. none of those worked to help me rest.however once i put that CD on within minutes i was fast asleep.good sleep too.

brywool wrote:

Gunbot wrote:Should artists only allow complete albums or Industry selected singles to be downloaded digitally or should the consumer be allowed to only download what he likes whether it be ten songs or one from any particular album?

Groups like the Eagles have been very vocal about not having their albums being offered as individual tracks on iTunes. If more artists follow the Eagle's lead, would this lead to more piracy as an answer to the consumer losing the ability to buy self selected tracks?

With the Eagles last album, it was pretty damned boring and I cannot believe it sold the way it did.
I've tried to get through it 3 times now and I can't. It's terrible.

You'd hope that letting people download individual tracks would push the artist to produce better tracks that people would WANT to download or that it would push the bands to produce a better album that people would want to download.

I think bands should offer individual downloadable tracks. There are bands that have rabid fans, there are bands that have casual fans. By The Eagles doing that, they're pushing away the casual fan that might listen to an individual track and think "this is really good, wonder what the rest of their stuff is like?" and then they would go download more tracks and possibly albums. By not giving them access to individual tracks, they've cut the casual fan out of it.

I think they should also offer tracks that aren't available on albums including all live shows. I know that after I go to a show, it would be great to have a recording of that very show. Some bands do this and I think it's been pretty successful for them. It also doesn't cost the bands much at all.

Regarding this subject, Perry wouldn't let you download the bonus tracks from his last compilation. That sucks because I already have all of the other tracks from buying the original albums and the CD+5 singles and the other compilation that he did. Did that make me purchase the entire new album just to get those other tracks? Nope. I took it as a big FU to those that bought the albums originally and so I don't have those tracks. If I find them posted illegally, I'll download them, but I'm not going to buy stuff I already have.

Greatest Hits albums should be outlawed. Hate them.

The problem here is royalties. Once you sell the performance, the Ascap/BMI fees that the venue has paid don't cover this sale. Any material on this live disc/flash device that is written by an outside songwriter or is owned by an outside publisher has to be audited to send out royalty payments based on units sold. If you change up your set list quite frequently and include songs in your setlist written by ex-members or third party songwriters, this would entail a lot of work for the accounting department.

For someone like Roger Waters, this idea makes sense. For a groups like Chicago, Journey, Foreigner and to a smaller degree, Styx, it's not so cut and dry.

Single downloads will always be there until artists can produce a good album all the way through, but then again, there will always be songs people won't like. Back in the day, bands tried hard to produce a full album full of good songs, but through the 80's, the focus turned to 1-3 blockbusters to carry the lackluster filler tunes. Fans caught on to this and started buying singles instead of full albums. The record companies caught on to that and started making the singles a little more expensive PLUS they'd rerelease them again in 6 months with yet another remix or something stupid and the fans would again but the single to have the newer version. By the time they bought 3-4 singles from the album, it would be cheaper to just buy the stupid album to begin with. Then Napster hit in 1999-2002 and the fans were sick to death of the games, so they started downloading illegally instead of getting robbed by a record company. Then the record companies get mad and are trying to figure out how to thwart this behavior with all sorts of stupid schemes when all it would take would be to make these artists write a FULL album full of good tunes instead of the 1-3 blockbusters and the rest filler.

mikemarrs wrote:the long road to eden i think was the name of it.i use it nightly as a way to induce sleep.xanax didn't work,valium,benadryl,tylenol pm,etc. none of those worked to help me rest.however once i put that CD on within minutes i was fast asleep.good sleep too.

LOL I use it at work to relax me when the stress gets high. Keeps the country music co-workers happy too. It's boring but soothing.

Pink Floyd can get away with it because A) They are not releasing new material; B) Their albums were full concepts which "need" to be listened to start-to-finish; C) They were QUALITY start-to-finish.

Eagles and most other bands will hurt themselves if they only allow full album downloads...unless, maybe, if they reduce the cost of the download. An entire album cannot cost the same to download as it does to buy in the store and it should not cost the same as buying all the tracks individually.

The one thing that bothers me now is this perceived value of a-buck-a-track. We as a country seem to like the dollar as a standard. We have it for food items, we have it for entire stores. But the buck-a-track deal leads to the aforementioned full-album download being the same as buying the physical product. There's no packaging, no delivery, no city/state tax. Why should it cost the same???