The Decline of Albums

In recent years, because of the rapid development of technology, physical versions of music like records and CDs are declining at an extremely fast rate. Because, in the past, virtually the only way to listen to music was through these mediums, and you could only buy them in album/EP/single form. Albums tended to function as a complete body of work that the artist intended for listeners to enjoy and appreciate the ideas and sounds formed by them. Now, though, most everyone takes the more convenient route and listens to music on streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, and more. This has led to some, mainly new, music artists adapting to easier ways to profit from their work, releasing singles at frequent rates and creating albums filled with these to maximize streaming sales. 

With an art such as music, celebrated since the dawn of time, becoming objectively oversimplified to just being catchy to a widespread audience is detrimental not only to the appreciation of novel ways that people look at the world but also to the various sounds represented in music worldwide, which is the base intention of music in the first place. When you strip all meaning behind art and use the same 25 cliches for every song, it morphs into redundant nothingness. Because albums are becoming less propelled upon people and strangely inconvenient to those only mildly invested in music, they opt to listen to songs devoid of any impact or meaning whatsoever. Thus, slowly, as the generation who experienced the height of physical media gets older, albums become less mainstream and pertinent in our society.

All of this being said, though, there are still a plethora of popular contemporary artists who strive to create conceptual albums meant to be appreciated and pointed out by their audience. Notable popular artists that are/have been doing this in the 21st century are R&B/Rap/Hip Hop artists like Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Jay Z, and many more. In other genres, artists like Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Charli XCX, and Billie Eilish have all found fame by releasing more cohesive and novel works that garnered critical recognition. In the end, it is artists like these who will be remembered and hailed as the best artists of our time because they are making music that has gumption: something that has the guts to commit to something and craft meaning out of it. They are bringing new ideas to the forefront of our society that cannot be ignored; exactly what art strives to do.