Observations and Questions

[Deleted member 133]

While I don't have peer-reviewed data in hand, I do have my own extensive database list of artist/groups albums that I have in my collection and what is plain to see is that while the "album" remains a mainstay in the music business, artists and groups are turning them out far less frequently that in the past / than their predecessors.

Decades ago it was commonplace, or seemingly required, that a pace of one album per year be maintained. Some artists did two or three in some years. (Elton John comes to mind.)

But as artists / groups aged they turned out fewer per year. Perhaps the creative spark was no longer there?

But I also notice that "today's" (or more recent decades') artists maintain nowhere near the pace of their predecessors - even early in their careers.

Of course there are exceptions to these observations; Prince comes to mind as someone who just kept churning them out.

Of course today's "album" typically has many more songs / is longer in length than those of past years: vinyl did not hold as many songs per disk, and while there were certainly double albums, they were relatively rare in comparison to single disc albums. In any case, most every yesterday's double album would easily fit on a single CD today.

Even projecting out over an artist's expected musical life nowadays, I intuit that, career-wise, today's artists will ultimately produce far less "content" (number of songs times average length of song) than past artists - over an equal-length career.

Is this trend because artists have better things to do today (like touring)? Is it cost? Or multiple other factors? As Mozart (I think) once said - and I paraphrase - is it because every combination of musical note has already been done?

I'm not saying that quantity equals quality, but taking equal quality and comparing it (as much as one can) it seems that yesterday's artists churned out far more quality than today's.

Jeff

 

[Flint]

I have opinions...

- I believe (generally speaking) the creative artists responsible for the lion's share of new successful releases are producing more today than in the past. With popular music, producers and writers are creating music darn near all the time with various names artists. Take all the rap producers who also "co-write" the music on famous artists' albums as an example. They tend to have one artist or another in their studios at all times. So, for that segment of the industry the output is much greater than historically (in the past folk like Todd Rundgren and Alan Parsons fit that model).

- Profitability for album sales has become almost nothing until you go gold and the majority of income for a non-writing musician is now in performing. As it was in the olden days before the golden era (approximately from 1966 to 1998), musicians today are often making records as a way to market what fans can enjoy at their shows. If the recording is pleasurable, the show will likely be better. At the show you can also buy T-Shirts, LPs, CDs, Calendars, Coasters, Jackets, and other memorabilia to take home, which also boost income for the band and support the tour. More bands are relying on touring than in the past, but even old musicians like in very famous bands, such as John Entwistle and Ringo Starr, needed to find a way to support their wealthy lifestyles when the bands weren't touring. So, the need for a new record is often tied to a scheduled new tour. Some bands tour all the time and the timing of a new album release is tied to just having enough new songs written which are worthy of recording - bands like Roger Cline and the Peacemakers come to mind in that scenario.

- Many artists do still produce a ton of recorded music, look at Neal Morse who puts out an album under his name every two years, or so, an album under Flying Colors every two years, one with Transatlantic every three years, and collaborates with other artists in between. Many talented musicians are doing that these days. Heck, the new band Gizmodrome had been working on getting together to produce their debut album for several years because the musicians were all too busy to find time to get together and work on it.

- The music industry is currently producing so damn much music that is in nearly impossible to generalize what is going on. Some artists are putting out a ton of albums at breakneck paces, while other are careful and precise about. Some of our favorite older musicians are making more money and having more fun working with other projects and only come up to make something with their names on it when it suits them, or they are contractually obliged to do so. There are so many diverse business models in the industry today, ranging from traditional big label models to self-publishers to personal play to play on livestreaming sites. Huge dollars can be earned by merely contributing to the music of a popular TV show, so what we comprehend from our favorite musicians is not what they may be doing on a daily basis.

- The artists' ages plays a huge role in productivity. In general, young musicians are starving and chasing the dream so hard that they focus on the music and ignore their personal lives. As such they write prolifically, they record whenever they can, and they love to tour that music. As they age and find success they tend to get into other aspects of the process, producing, writing for others, collaborating, and so on. They also develop personal lives with relationships, obligations, children, and so on. This leads to less productivity and creativity and thus less new music. Since we are now of a certain age, we also are not out there hunting down the young new artists, so by the time we discover someone "new", they may have already transitioned out of their highly productive period and have several albums under their belts. So, it could be things are exactly the same as they used to be, but we don't see it because out perspectives are completely different.

Those are my random thoughts on the subject.