Todays streaming era of music has introduced us to the inception of the long album. Major artists are now releasing projects geared towards streaming numbers and playlist placements. The last couple years has seen Chris Brown release back to back 30 plus song albums, (along with 30 plus song deluxe albums a few months after the initial album release) Rae Sremmurd release a triple album with each album having 20 plus songs (a single album for each member of the group and a group album) and most recently August Alsina releasing a 27 song album. There are still artist creating “regular length” albums (in the range of 10-14 songs) that were standard in the era of physical copies (CDs) but that is becoming more of a rarity than the norm. Are the longer albums a good trend for the music industry? Or are they over saturating the market?
As little as 10 years ago, artists who released albums, (physical copies sold in stores) were caped at a total of 10-12 songs because that was all that could fit on a compact disc. If you wanted to put more songs on your release you would have to release a double album. (which was rarely done unless you were a superstar artist) As an artist it was your job to create a complete body of work with your best songs, because these 10-12 songs were going to have to captivate your audience for the next 18-24 months until your next release. You would release one single (generally with an accompanying video) before the release of your album, then one other (possibly two if you were a superstar) single with another accompanying video a few weeks after your album release. You had to put your best foot forward, because if you didn’t your singles wouldn’t make it on the billboard chart, your album would be on the billboard chart, and your video would be in the top 10 countdown on 106 & Park, and MTV. If you were a major artist on a major label and didn’t hit at least one (or multiple, however some of these feats were skewed because they could be influenced by the label, not on the merit of the song itself) your project was considered a flop and thus effected your future budget and releases.
Nowadays it seems the music industry is less concerned about the quality of (not saying that the artist is not concerned about quality because every artist and creative person is greatly concerned about perfection) but rather the quantity. (most likely due to the demands of the label, and most likely for financial reasons) Artists are releasing an increasingly greater quantity of music because this method will inflate their streaming numbers and increase their chance of getting on a wider variety of playlists. The more playlists an artists songs get placed on (even if the playlist is a personal one, or a newly created one that has no followers, hint for new up and coming artists, if you personally create and have your friends and family create playlists to add your newly released songs to, you will mess with the algorithm of the streaming platform thus increasing the performance of your song) the more plays that song will get and thus the song will appear on the front page and possible as the cover art for the playlist on the streaming platform. With the way streaming numbers work, and the way songs make money through steaming platforms (pennies on the dollar per stream) the more streams the song gets, the more popular playlist placements the song will get without having to play or influence the playlist curator.
Which style of albums do the fans prefer? Without personally having the exact metrics for each album that is streamed compared to the total albums sales of the physical compact disc era I can’t say definitively. However, I can implore my opinion and the sentiments of others I have spoken to and heard talk about this issue. Of the people I have spoken to about this topic, (mostly people that have been in the music industry for years, some that are constantly still listening to music and some that don’t necessarily listen to a ton of newly released music unless it is brought to their attention) they are not a huge fan of the longer album. These albums have too many songs, it takes way to long to listen to (example being the previous two Chris Brown albums that each had 30 songs and the deluxe version that had even more, all of which would take at least three hours to listen to straight through, but more than likely were listened to over the course of a couple days, which is a long time to get through the same album) and for the most part a majority (if not all) the songs sound the same. The same sentiment is relayed by podcasters, and radio personnel I have heard speak on this issue. Some of them even saying that they shy away from these type of albums, and if they see an album has 20 or more songs, regardless of the artist, they won’t spend the time to listen to the album at all. Rather they will wait for other people to do so and get the “footnotes” of the album. (meaning they will wait for the public to post which songs are good to listen to on social media and then go and listen to those songs, apposed to listening to the whole album to pick out these few songs) Me personally, I don’t necessarily like the trend of the longer albums, however, depending on the artist I will take the time to listen to the album in its entirety. If I am a fan of the artist I will take the time to listen, (even if it takes me a week to fully get through the album) but after one listen through I may not go back to the album at all because I can’t remember which songs I liked and which ones I didn’t, because all I remember is the amount of time it took to get through the album. At the same time, because I am actively in the music industry as a manager and A&R, I will listen to longer albums from most artists simply to hear the sound of the current artists. (but in these cases if I am listening to the album just to hear what they sound like I will be faster to skip through the album if I don’t like the song)
Now, with all that being said, the sentiments of the younger generation are different. It seems as though they don’t mind the longer albums. I think this is due to a few reasons. First, I think it is because they are not listening to the entire album. I think they are listening to the released singles (the feature single released before and the songs that get featured on playlists, radio and have music videos after the album has been released) and creating a playlist based on those songs, which in turn will have the similar sounding songs from that album being played based on the platform algorithm. Second, I believe it is because they are not taking the time to fully listen to the album. I think they are skipping through the album until they hear an intro to a beat they like, and if they don’t hear that appealing sound within the first ten-seconds of the song, they are skipping the song. Due to this, the artists are creating longer albums so they can appeal to a larger audience that are listening to albums in this way. Third, I actually don’t think they are listening to the album at all. Artist are releasing multiple single before the full project so they can boost the streaming numbers of the album even before it is released. (because the streaming numbers of a single are included in the streaming numbers of the full project, so if a single goes multi platinum through streaming, then the album will go multi platinum as soon as it is released) I think the kids are continually listening to the singles, and thus the numbers are saying they are listening to the album when in reality they are just listening to the singles over and over and may not even know the album has been released. (streaming numbers are skewed because each stream of a song or album is counted differently, meaning that a stream from a paying and non-paying account count differently, downloading the album as apposed to non-download listens count differently, playlist and non-playlist listens count differently, and if you like a song it counts differently than if you listen and don’t like the song) Lastly, it is due to the attention span of the younger generation. Their attention span is incredibly low, and because of this the longer the album, the more songs they can listen to, thus (hopefully) keeping their attention for longer. Not saying that a longer album will keep their attention longer, but a longer album gives them a wider variety of songs to choose from to keep them occupied with the release longer, apposed to a 10 song release that they could easily get bored with after the first weekend the project is released. Now, of course I know that even when an artist releases a 20 song album, the younger generation is asking for a completely new project the week after, but I think their attention spans are at least curved a little bit by a 30 song album because after they get tired of the first 5 songs they like, they can listen to the other 25 and find another five songs to listen to on repeat for the next month.
When it all boils down to it, the debate between the longer albums vs the shorter albums is a debate of preference. In this streaming era I think we will continue to see artists release longer albums because it is a way to beat the steaming algorithms to get the most out of their projects. We do still see artist releasing normal length projects, (and in most cases these 10-12 songs are better constructed than the longer albums) but the artists that are releasing these projects are not necessarily considered superstars to the mass public. (even though their music could be considered in this tier, they are considered on the second or third tier of popular artists) The artists that are releasing regular length albums have a core following that will always listen to their albums, and will be satisfied with this shorter length because the quality is there and they can continually listen to this project for the next year or two and not be bored. (or they could go the route of Griselda and release 10-14 song albums every few months that have amazing quality and content that keeps the fans coming back every time) I believe the longer album structure and trend is here to stay, for better or worse. Music is subjective and everyone has their preference. As long as that holds true everyone will have a different opinion on the style and length of album they prefer.
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