Amateur Hour

I've been responding a bit to a message thread on Elliott Randall's Facebook page about the shift from album purchases to single purchases in the digital era. As I pointed out there, this is the industry coming full circle; for the better part of the 20th century, starting with 78 RPM discs and moving into 45 RPM singles, music was purchased one song at a time. The classic album era of the mid-60s to late-80s or so were actually a historical anomaly. Whether we're talking the Top Forty era or today's iTunes-dominated market, consumers have generally preferred to purchase single tracks instead of whole albums.

One can bemoan this fact, as many do, but it is what it is. When the conversation naturally veers into why  today's consumers prefer purchasing one or two tracks instead of an entire album, one has to recognize the possibility that maybe there are only a few tracks on any given album worth buying. Now, this certainly wasn't the case during the classic album era, when artists conceived an album as a start-to-finish project, but it was the way it was in the Top Forty era before that. Back then, an artist had a hit or two that led off the album, and the rest of the tracks were just filler. I'm not sure it's that different today, and here's why.

Back in the 50s and 60s, and maybe even early 70s, music was made by professionals -- at all points in the process. An artist chose a set of songs written by professional songwriters, then hired a group of professional studio musicians to record them. The recording was made in a professional studio by a professional recording engineer, and the whole process was overseen by a professional record producer. The results were, not surprisingly, uniformly professional.

Today, however, there aren't a lot of professionals in the process, especially when you're talking about the typical indie recording. First off, all the songs are written by the artist, who is seldom a trained or skilled songwriter. (There are lots of reasons for this self-writing phenomenon, including money -- in the form of songwriting royalties -- and artistic hubris.) The artist plays the music himself, and if it isn't quite as good as the studio pros might have done it, it can always be touched up in Pro Tools. Needless to say, the artist does his own recording, typically in his own "home studio" (re: basement or bedroom), and serves as his own recording engineer and producer. There are no professionals anywhere in the loop to add that extra touch or refinement, and no outsiders period to do any editing or provide useful feedback.

The result is, more often than not, a self-indulgent, amateurish mess. Today's typical album contains too many songs (you can put 70+ minutes on a CD, so you might as well fill them all up) that, frankly, aren't all that listenable. Oh, today's computer recording technology can put a nice sheen on the thing, but the underlying songs are dreadfully dull and unmusical, and the recorded performances uninspiring. Without valuable professional input at all stages, the resulting product just isn't as good as similar recordings made decades ago.

Given the substandard quality songs, performances, and recordings common today, it shouldn't be surprising that the average indie album sells fewer than 2,000 copies (according to Billboard; Soundscan pegs it closer to 500 units). This also may explain why consumers buy just one or two tracks piecemeal from an album. There isn't that much that's worth spending money on; maybe there's a good track or two, but the rest is filler, at best.

Before anybody gets their knickers in a bunch, of course there are exceptions to this. There are lots of musicians who have the innate talent to produce quality music in today's do-it-yourself environment -- but there are lots more who don't. All you have to do is listen to enough new music today, and you'll see what I mean.

I value the contribution that professional songwriters, musicians, engineers, and producers can bring to the table. I wish there were more of it. It's certainly worth considering that the declining quality -- and sales -- of music today could be reversed with a little more professional input.

But that's just my opinion. Reasonable minds may disagree.