August 18, 2009 Radiohead Sets Another Example by Saying Good Riddance to the Album
Okay, so the traditional album is dead - Get over it. The album died when the physical product of a CD, cassette, etc. lost prominence and importance amongst the average consumer. This may make the true music fanatic question the artistic integrity of a musician - Singles? I want a body of work. But what does this really mean? The album, for all practical matters, is just a figment of our imagination - created by the limited amount of storage space on a CD and an industry standard set by hegemonic major labels. Most albums contain a few hits and the rest acts as almost a filler. There are definitely albums that can be considered an entire piece of work, take Dark Side of the Moon for example, but these albums are few and far between. Today, consumers seek out something from artists that couldn’t be produced at such scale before the advent of the internet: content and lots of it.