Despite the release of Katy Perry’s highly anticipated album, “Prism,” this past week was the worst week for album sales since 1991, Reuters reported. Although Prism sold the most albums in an opening week by a female artist this year, it sold just a mere 286,000 copies. Album sales this year have been lower compared to last year, “partly because of listeners finding new digital platforms to consume music, often for free,” Reuters reported.
Back in the early 2000s, it was the norm to run to Best Buy the day a new album came out and listen to it on repeat for the next two months. However, according to Reuters, with the creation of iTunes and online-streaming websites and the fact that our attention spans are dwindling, this norm is long gone.
“Who wants to buy a whole CD of one artist,” Alexis Berns, senior at UIUC, said. “Not that many artists have albums that I’m interested in listening to in their entirety, so it makes it more sense to get individual songs elsewhere.”
Although not new, online streaming agents such as Pandora, Soundcloud, 8-Tracks and Spotify are becoming more mainstream for Collegiates than actually purchasing songs or albums from iTunes.
According to Billboard, Pandora had 72.2 million listeners in September 2013, up 25 percent from the same time last year. Pandora allows you to type in artists that you like, and the website will generate a playlist of songs similar to what you typed in. “If I’m in the mood to listen to a certain song, I play that song or artist’s Pandora station,” Berns said. “Sometimes I don’t like some of it, but I love hearing new songs.”
Another perk that streaming agents like Pandora and Spotify add is the element of surprise. These platforms can be a great way to not only listen to music you already love, but also a way to discover new music and create variety.
“I like Spotify and Pandora because they never get boring,” Hillary Waldstein, senior at UIUC, said. “You can listen to your same old iTunes library over and over again and nothing new comes up. Spotify suggests new artists for you, and Pandora just gives them right to you. I love discovering new artists this way.”
As Collegiates, it can also get really expensive to buy music while on a college budget. “I think iTunes is genius, but I also think it’s expensive,” Berns said. “Realistically, I can’t afford to buy all of the music I want to listen to. I hope the future of downloading includes musicians releasing their music online for free.”
Luckily for Berns, this is slowly becoming reality. Recently, some artists have released their music on the Internet for free. GRiZ, an electro-soul DJ, just recently released his new album “Rebel Era” for free on his website (http://mynameisgriz.com/music/rebel-era-out-now). Berns and Waldstein both took advantage of this free download.
Berns said that because of new advances like this, she doesn’t find a need to buy CDs anymore, and Waldstein put it, “Why buy the album when you can listen for free?”
No, our generation isn’t old enough to remember the time when records became obsolete because of cassette players. However, we can remember when cassette players became obsolete because of CDs. Now the question is, how soon will CDs become obsolete to mp3s?
“I think it’s funny that there are people living today that won’t even know what buying a CD was like,” Waldstein reminisced. “Maybe it’s because we’re 90s babies so we experienced the transition, but I do have a bit of nostalgia for opening up a CD and looking through the little book that comes in the front cover. It’s awesome how accessible music is now through the Internet, but it makes me wonder how we’ll remember this age of music.”
Whether it’s listening to free-steaming websites or downloading albums legally (or illegally) for free, the music listening and buying process is ever evolving. Collegiates, how will you choose to listen?
Sources:
http://tv.yahoo.com/news/katy-perry-tops-billboard-worst-week-album-sales-230701753.html