KEY POINTS:
As long as bands like My Chemical Romance are around, the album has a future.
Well, that's an optimistic view at least. Many predict the long-player is doomed as more and more music consumers buy single tracks, rather than whole albums, from music download sites.
In New Zealand
that practice will soon increase dramatically with the news Apple's iTunes Music Store is launching here sometime soon.
However, whether it's a conscious decision or not, bands like the Killers, the Mars Volta and My Chemical Romance, whose new release, The Black Parade, is a good old-fashioned concept album that sat at No 1 in New Zealand for two weeks, are fighting back.
The irony is that many fans of My Chemical Romance are also the savvy digital music punters who are cherry-picking songs rather than buying the album. But, downloading three or four of their favourite tracks off The Black Parade would be like reading a book with chapters ripped out. Dramatic but true - The Black Parade is the story of a cancer victim.
And here's some other examples of albums that just wouldn't be the same if they were sliced. Imagine being without the entirety of The Wall. When Pink Floyd's Roger Waters plays here in January he won't just be playing Money and Us and Them, he'll play the whole of The Dark Side of the Moon the way it was meant to be heard.
And how would London Calling by the Clash sound without both sides? More recently, Bic Runga's Birds lacked the obvious singles of her previous albums but as a whole it was faultless.
However, there are definite signs the album format is on the wane. Urban music albums, which includes the hip-hop and R&B genres, have suffered dramatically. You only need to analyse the local charts: the top 30 singles chart is jam-packed with urban stars like Fergie, Chamillionaire, and Janet Jackson, whereas only Justin Timberlake and Beyonce feature in the album charts.
The decline in CD sales doesn't help the plight of the long-player either, although some music buyers are resorting to the old vinyl format. But the resurgence of vinyl is not going to threaten the digital music market.
Statistics supplied by local music download site Digirama show it sold more than 10,000 songs in October, but only around 500 albums.
For most music-lovers that's sad news - as it is for the musicians, many of whom still see the album as the pinnacle of musical creativity.
Another album that sold well this year was the Mars Volta's Amputechture. While not strictly a concept album, the 10-minute-plus tracks and continuous nature of the album doesn't make much sense as separate songs. The band's singer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, believes singles are misguiding and likens them to movie trailers.
"The catchier the trailer the more you think the whole movie is going to be like that, but it's not always the case," he says. "I'm hoping we can bring back choosing albums based on the whole, including things like artwork. That challenges more bands to not be so single-orientated and derivative because it puts you into a bad place."
Local music institution Tim Finn has a different view. You could say he's down with the kids.
"You know," he says, "music is just music and sometimes it feels like it's being taken hostage but it will always wriggle free. So I don't think any of this matters to music itself, and if things change it's because things do change. So the album will probably pass on and possibly become something else.
"And if you are [downloading individual songs] then you can make your own compilation and I love compilations. Our family make little compilations up for car journeys and it's great, so bring it on."
Finn still has a soft spot for the album, especially the sequencing of the tracks to create the right feel, which he believes he got right on his new album, Imaginary Kingdom.
"It's a mysterious process because you fiddle around and sometimes you get lucky. So with an album there is a satisfying wholeness to it if you get it right, and people are happy to let it wash over them. That's why the great albums are called great, partly because they do flow so well from song to song."
Then there's an artist like Beck, a self-confessed traditionalist who likes vinyl and album art but is no longer content to release an album of songs.
"It's time for the album to embrace technology," he told Wired magazine in September. "For me it's all about giving the music legs [and] giving people new ways to experience it. I'd love to put out an album you could edit and mix directly in iTunes."
Adam Holt, the head of Universal Music in New Zealand, says there's no question that people are cherry-picking but doesn't believe the album will become extinct. He says artists like German industrial metallers Rammstein are also combating the downloading of individual tracks by allowing only whole album downloads.
"From an artistic point of view the album will always be there. There might be some artists who will only work in the single format now, but the reality is most artists don't. I think The Black Parade is a really smart move on those guys' [My Chemical Romance] part because they've actually thought about it. Their execution from cover art, to the lyrics, all the way through to their videos, is remarkable."
