Is The Album Dead?
December 18 2008, 10:51 AM
Filed in: Music News
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has revealed that 2007's Zeitgeist will be their last album.
"People don't even listen to it all," Corgan told Chicago Tribune. "They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest.
"The listening patterns have changed," he added. "So why are we killing ourselves to do albums? Our primary function now is to be a singles band. We'll still be creative, but in a different form."
As reported by Kerrang here:
http://www2.kerrang.com/2008/12/smashing_pumpkins_wont_release.html
The digital age of music has not only changed the way music is consumed but also how it's produced and created. It's an extremely exciting time for the music industry, and despite all of the negativity surrounding shrinking sales (this year's album sales are off 45% from the same time in 2000) artists are only limited by their imagination. There are no more rules.
As reported by the LA Times today, annual sales of digital songs will surpass 1 billion downloads this year, a first for the struggling music industry.
From the online distribution experiments of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, to bands signing deals with Live Nation instead of a record label, to artists like the Pumpkins changing their approach to how their product will be created, the industry has only just begun to see the impact and changes of the digital age.
The Internet.
More than just a series of tubes.
