mlsstl wrote: > This is somewhat off-subject, but the concept of an album as a "complete > work" is a relatively recent idea in popular music. 78s and cylinders > only allowed for a few minutes of music. While you could buy classical > works on 78 records, you ended up with a group of 8 or 10 records. That > wasn't done with popular music. > > Prior to the 1940s, sheet music outsold records and popular songs were > purchased as individual works. The song "After the Ball" by Charles > Harris was a sheet music pop best seller in the 1890s. It sold 2 million > copies in 1892 and perhaps 5 million that decade. > > The LP (long playing record) wasn't available to consumers until 1948 > and through much of the 50s was rarely used as anything more than a > collection of songs by the same artist. "Theme" albums (other than > Christmas, etc.) didn't really come onto the scene until some of the > rock bands in the 1960s started to fancy themselves serious artists. > > So, one can argue that the sale of individual songs on iTunes, Amazon > and similar services is actually a return to the more common way of > enjoying popular music for most of the 140 year history of music sales > to the public.
Agreed, mostly. There have been a lot of "theme" albums, but not many that actually worked very well. Most "albums" (CD or otherwise) are simple collections of songs from a particular time in an artist's evolution. Some of the songs might be good, some not so good. On occasion this works very well as a reflection of a very creative or special period in an artist's (or group's) working life. Sadly, there are just not all that many Gracelands or Dark Side of the Moons or Broken Englishes. Ron ------------------------------------------------------------------------ RonM's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17029 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95603 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
