Remember the days when you’d get a fresh new CD and play your favourite artist’s album from start to finish? In the car, in your room, on speakers; you’d cherish every song and find all of your favourites. Now, with this new age of streaming services encompassing all of our listening needs in one place, the allure of the album has disappeared. This may be because streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music promote and push single songs onto listeners way more than they promote albums. Singles are put onto platform-produced playlists, displayed on artists’ “Top Songs” charts, and sometimes feature guest artists, which draws in a whole other audience. All in all, streaming services promote singles much more often than they do albums.
Another explanation for the decline of album listening may be due to a deteriorating attention span. We are already aware that TikTok has been a factor in deteriorating all of our attention spans to last for less than 60 seconds, but did you ever think about how this may be affecting your music listening? We no longer have the patience to commit to one hour of music—3 minutes may even be stretching it. Our playlists are now filled with a variety of artists and genres, which may have their perks, but we rarely think to turn on a whole album. Our parents’ music listening experiences consisted of buying a new record and sitting down to intently listen to the entire thing from start to finish. No shuffling, no skips, no playlists. Just the entire album experience. Now, artists come out with single after single that people can add to their playlists, so what’s the need for a whole album?
Another reason that singles are increasing in popularity may be due to the rise in “One Hit Wonders”. Normal people have opportunities nowadays to become famous overnight, which never existed before. From TikTok to YouTube to Instagram, the possibilities are endless to get “discovered”. Take TikTok songs for example: there are songs that we only know two lines from because they are a sound on TikTok, and yet they’re stuck in our heads 24/7. Not only can popular artists have a sound blow up on TikTok, but anybody can go viral if their sound is good enough. And there you have an overnight one-hit wonder with no album in sight. We have these shiny new toys of artists such as Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo that we listen to for a little while until another young artist has a hit single and we move on. The age of buying CDs or records and listening through from start to finish is dead.
Now I’m not saying this is completely a negative thing; maybe having more variety in our playlists makes our listening experience better. Maybe this has caused people to expand their music horizons, diversify their tastes, and venture into new areas because they only need to listen to one song. I’m curious about the impact this has on the music industry and artists as a whole. Are streaming services really the best way to listen to music? Artists are now being paid by this third-party platform and therefore may be getting less of a cut than they would be if their albums were being bought directly from a store. This is the reason that some artists refuse to have their songs on streaming platforms, such as Taylor Swift during her negotiations with Spotify for proper compensation.
The convenience of streaming services is undeniable, especially in the current state of our mobile world. But maybe we should consider listening to an entire album every now and then, just for the vintage vibes.