chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
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Posted 30 Jan 2004 10:53 am |
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Fewer songs, better records
By Fred Shuster
Music Writ,er Daily News
As the record industry is about to celebrate its biggest night of the year, it's considering taking a hint from America's latest low-carb diet craze and may begin issuing more-nutritious, less-filling compact discs.
After years of watching downloading, file sharing and bootlegging take bites out of their bottom line, the major labels are rethinking a bigger-is-better policy that stuffs an 80-minute CD with skits, outtakes, alternate takes, remixes and generally lackluster material that often overshadows a record's best moments.
In the pre-CD era, the standard two-sided vinyl album took in about a dozen songs and lasted around 40 minutes -- restricted by the technological limitations of the format. In 1966, the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds,' a rock-era classic usually voted either the greatest or second-greatest pop album of the last century, clocked in at a couple of minutes under 40 with 13 songs, each track lasting an average of less than three minutes. A few months later, Bob Dylan's milestone "Blonde on Blonde' broke the 40-minute mold by being a double album, running more than an hour. But it was the rare exception.
"A dozen songs really is the ideal length,' said veteran music executive Ian Ralfini, co-manager of Manhattan/EMI Records, which in March will issue the debut of the promising young vocalist Keri Noble. "In the world of downloading, where people take one or two tracks, 12 titles is the perfect amount of material for an album. It's the right number of songs to take in during a sitting without causing fatigue. It's also the right amount in order to do something interesting with the sequencing.'
Often in the days of vinyl, artists went into studios with a surplus of material, but were forced to make choices based on the format's limitation. Albums like the Beatles' "Revolver,' the Rolling Stones' "Let It Bleed' or Otis Redding's "Otis Blue' were coherent, carefully crafted statements that moved from point A to B and beyond, forcing listeners to become physically involved by getting up to turn the album over. That tactile element, and the actual size and packaging of vinyl, played an important role in the appreciation of music for previous generations.
Then came the expensive and excessive CD format, which engendered the sense that consumers should receive more for their money when shelling out for hour-plus digital reissues of their favorite vinyl. Outtakes never meant to be included on the original were unearthed as bonus tracks. In truth, with few exceptions, the extra material simply wasn't good enough the first time around.
The vinyl analysis
"If the record business will ever flourish again, it will have to figure out how to make records people actually want to buy,' said jazz pianist John Wood, son of the founder of Dot Records, which was among the biggest pop labels of the 1950s, and president of the Society for the Rehumanization of American Music, an advocacy group for better music. "I'm someone who grew up with vinyl and still has thousands of albums and I remember a sense of value for the money. Nothing sounds as good as a good vinyl pressing. To me, CDs are insignificant, angry little things -- and they're hard to open.'
Putting aside attempts to anthropomorphize the silvery saucers, it's generally agreed that CD filler is turning out to be a killer, causing listener exhaustion and sparking resentment against artists who appear to insist their every idle thought is worth paying for and sitting through. Take, for example, the case of Lauryn Hill. The hip-hop songbird had multiformat crossover appeal and real career momentum following her multiple Grammy Award-winning 1998 solo debut, which contained an only- somewhat-padded 16 tracks. Four years later, Hill issued a sequel, a double-disc acoustic effort jammed with patronizing between-song spoken platitudes. The record met with widespread disinterest and eventually a fan backlash.
"People in the industry are now realizing that just because you can put 80 minutes on a CD doesn't mean you have to,' said music writer Bob Lefsetz, who hosts a music industry chat show on KLSX-FM (97.1) on Sunday nights. "The record companies have finally found out that nobody listens to entire albums anymore. See, in the old days, you were forced to listen to a whole side or else you had to get up and turn it over or search for cuts you wanted by picking up the turntable arm. Today, they put their best three songs up front and people listen and then switch to something else. The fact that CDs have gotten so lengthy and expensive is just more evidence of how the music business is not in touch with the consumer.
"Ultimately, people are begging for singles.'
CDs overflowing with useless material present one of many reasons for the worldwide popularity of single-song downloading. Additionally, as Lefsetz points out, a decade of 20-track CDs containing five worthwhile cuts, along with shuffle-play technology, has led to unforeseen consequences -- hardly anybody listens to an entire album in a single sitting anymore.
That may be one reason why so many forthcoming big releases, including Norah Jones' sophomore disc, "Feels Like Home' (at 13 tracks), have cut down on fat-inducing carbs. Consider: new albums by Incubus, Kenny Chesney, Melissa Etheridge and Harry Connick Jr. and the "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' soundtrack offer no more than 14 numbers each (rap and hip-hop acts resist shorter CDs; those albums are traditionally heavy on skits, interludes, sound effects and remixes).
"Rap albums were once an art form,' said rap insider and author Bill Adler, now curator of New York's Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery, which specializes in hip-hop culture. "Albums by people like N.W.A., Public Enemy and Dr. Dre were entertaining from beginning to end, and completely brilliant. What's being done now is the attempt to fill the entire 80 minutes any way possible. I've always believed the proper length of a CD or record should be 45 minutes, the way a proper length for a feature film is under two hours.'
Emergency surgery
Industry heavyweights, including Howard Stringer, head of Sony Corp. of America, have suggested limiting the number of songs on CDs and selling them for less. Ideally, the theory goes, that would combat the loudest grumbles heard among buyers -- that albums today are too long, only mildly interesting and cost way too much.
As sales plummeted for the third straight year, Universal Music Group recently slashed album prices, but the move may be too late for a generation that increasingly believes DVDs and video games offer far more entertainment value (DVDs hold at least two hours of material and cost about the same as a CD).
Further, new research shows that younger music fans in the United States have no attachment to the physical properties of a CD, the way previous generations enjoyed holding the record, gazing at the cover and reading the credits.
"One of the most incredible things we've found is that this generation doesn't particularly care about having a physical product at all,' said Neil Portnow, president of the Recording Academy, which stages the Grammy Awards on Feb. 8 at Staples Center. "These kids didn't grow up going to record stores. They live on the computer. To some young people, the CD jewel box and booklets are burdens. They want the music burned and delivered through a home stereo or portable unit.'
That makes sense to Derek Sivers, founder of the popular online indie music store CD Baby. He says that in an era where increasing numbers of people use their computers to listen to Internet radio, where they find far more interesting fare than on commercial stations, it stands to reason they would want to keep their music online.
"The car radio doesn't give them anything they haven't already heard a million times,' said Sivers, a panelist at the DIY Convention: Do It Yourself in Film, Music & Books, a three-day event starting Feb. 5 in Hollywood (see www.diyconvention.com "People want to discover something for themselves again, just like they used to do in the vinyl age.' |
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