Albums are dead - or are they?

Member Discussion
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I know it’s not a fresh video, but I’ve just found it today. What do you think of Ola’s opinion?

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Pretty spot on.
You could make an album to sell at shows or on your bands website.
Like he said it all about attention span of people these days. Another reason not many people can actually play music … it takes a lot of work.

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Over here (Hungary, Europe) that doesn’t work either. I have a couple of friends who were heavily interested in releasing and distributing black/death/thrash metal and I helped them out setting up shop at gigs and working at the merch desk. 99% of what was sold were bought by the same 4-5 fanatics at every gig and the transactions were usually agreed on previously… Whenever we had a bunch of ppromo CDs for free, people were flocking to the desk. But spending money on a release? Naah, gimme booze for thrice the price… And with time even the concerts became nothing else but keg parties for the same 40-50 guys, because the majority of the “fans” deemed 10-15 USD worth of local currency too much for a gig. We’re talking underground here, but my friend bought here Lich King or NunSlaughter from the US for example. You’d think that it makes guys wanna spend the price of a couple of beers to see them. Nope. “Duude, the tix are too expensive” Sad, really sad. But the next gig at the same place with local bands “playing” gore/grind/noise shit was sold out. Reason? The tickets cost half the money…

So I think that the abundance of free options add up to the short attention span creating a perfect environment for quantity over quality. Which might indeed cause that 7-8 singles are considered more than the same 7-8 songs put together on an album…

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Where I lived most of my life there simply was no market for metal except at obscure shows where multiple bands would play all day and night not to be seen again until the next year if they were still together. The digital ocean of music of all types is difficult to wade for any listener. To standout is more difficult for than ever any artist.

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Exactly! I often find myself listening to the same old 40-50 albums because of that. I would.love to have some new music in my playlist but sometimes I just find the process of going through 20-30 albums too tiring to find one that is really a standout. There are so many bands, so many albums and I don’t think that that are more great bands out there than, say, 30 years ago. But due to to digital platforms and home recording many bands can push their music that would’ve gone down the drain in times where you needed serious funds even for a crappy demo tape.

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I have been dual booting with Linux operating systems for a number of years and Arduor audio workstation and various other tools are available for free. This more than serves my needs at home and the quality is as good as some paid tools. There are various listening platforms to upload music projects too, but it becomes the listeners job to sort through it all.The chances that someone who could give an artist a leg up would stumble across a given project is slim.

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