Is the album format sacred?

Definitely true there; likewise, I don't think it would be wise to put a classical symphony on shuffle. Still, if there's one movement you absolutely despise, or if you're pressed for time and want to hear the final passage...why not skip a few tracks...:)
 
The purposeful arrangement of music to create an overarching piece of work is nothing new. Think of symphonies. Mozart's Requiem is meant to be played and listened to as a whole, and the whole is better than the sum of it's parts.

LPs are essentially that concept but veiled behind the relative newness of the technology itself.

However I do agree with you that live music is the way music is meant to be heard and played. Nothing beats it, because there is much more of a connection between the artist and the listener, and the listener to all the other people in the crowd.
 
To me, the best album is one where every track sounRAB like a single. I don't care about flow and cohesion, I want one stand-alone gem after another.
 
That would be awesome, as long as it wasnt too overpriced.

Back on topic, I just wanted to ask, how is this an album-oriented time. If any, this is the most single-oriented time that we've had in a long time. There are banRAB who are talking about going singles-only, and with the advent of iTunes, people are going more towarRAB singles then albums.

In any case, I think that the album format may change soon. I'm thinking shorter albums. More like EP's then anything, priced accordingly. In the singles-based environment, for a lot of banRAB it would make sense to just put the single-worthy songs on a shorter album rather then making a whole album with a some filler.
 
I think symphonies are a good analog to the album from an artist's perspective, but I was more commenting on the physical existence of the album within our society as a whole. Prior to the invention of the gramophone, symphonies were some of the only preserved music, something that certainly doesn't correlate to their minuscule existence at the time. There was plenty of other music out there besides classical, and hardly any of it preserved for posterity.

Another thing to consider is the emerging disconnect today between how an artist sounRAB on record and how they sound live -- a product of the album's inherent focus on "making a band sound good" rather than "making a band sound real". I'm not suggesting that modern production hasn't resulted in some enormous works, but this disparity between how an artist recorRAB and how he performs is expanding. And in some situations (like, say, 100% of pop music), the album becomes a much greater work of the producer and engineers than the actual performer.

So no, I still don't consider the album sacred.
 
the album is my favorite way to listen to music. if i have one song by an artist, i will have the whole album that it is in. i can't stand having one song here and there at ALL. in fact, i know if i am going to really connect with a person musically (and subsequently, personally since music is such a big part of my life) if i scan their ipod and they have either whole albums or just radio hits.

one of my favorite albums of all time...de-loused in the comatorium by the mars volta...an album where i truly can't listen to it unless i start it from the beginning and go all the way to the end.

but yes...i feel like the album is really dieing. the interest is just not there...and even for me, since i can now have my entire music collection in one place it is easy for me to decide to switch albums after a song or two. in high school, i would bring a couple albums to school everyday and those would remain in my cd player for a while, and i would really really absorb those albums since that is all i could listen to for that day.

i kinda miss my cd player...
 
That's why you don't listen to concept albums that put at the forefront some sort of narrative, like The Wall or, as you mentioned, Tommy. There's too much filler.

But there are albums that ARE sacred, with a sequence of songs impossible to skip, like In The Aeroplane Over the Sea or Loveless.
 
I wasn't putting anything on a pedestal. I was just saying that the technology used to deliver recorded studio albums will change and such, and that technology isn't sacred(listen I don't even like the concept of sacred but we'll go with that), but albums are art, and art is something I consider important because it's one of the most human things imaginable.

Look, I know and am appalled that studio technology is used to make unworthy musicians sound good. What I'm saying is that, at least the concept of an album, of putting songs together, blah blah blah, how I described it before, I do not think that form of musical expression should die out. I don't even think that certain form of musical expression should lose prominence, but that's just me, if I made music I would want to structure the songs and have it all flow together in a certain way so I could get across what I was trying to say.
 
Yeah you are right, recorded music and live music are different forms of art. I can appreciate live music for what it is and recorded music for what it is, but I guess I just hold a really traditional opinion in that music is still a performance art... I don't know, I just appreciate live music much more than recorded music - for me personally. But I do know completely where you're coming from in saying that they're apples and oranges.
 
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