Death Of The Album?

Image © Aidan C. Siegel

I loved my Walkman - it was a right of passage when I got that shiny red Philips Skymaster for my birthday. Yep, I could finally take my tapes on the move, wherever I wanted, without my parents listening. The joy of Public Enemy, 808 State, and the guilty pleasure of 'Now' albums... I went through more batteries a month than a desperate housewife with an Ann Summers catalogue.

Even when CDs came along, my trusty tape deck was still with me - by this time I'd upgraded and it had a radio as well. Progress huh? The usage pattern still stayed the same though - get an album onto tape and listen to it.

These days everything has changed. We have convenient, instant gratification available to us thanks to the Internet, iTunes, and mp3 players. You can fit an entire CD collection in a player the size of a wallet, with room to spare for movie files of every episode of Family Guy and South Park for the bargain.

I bought my first iPod in 2004, a 40gb music-only player. It was amazing - all those years of tunes now in my pocket, I could finally catch up on all the albums I'd meant to spend time listening to. Only I didn't. Modern music players brought in a new way of listening - playlists.

Playlists are like a digital compilation tape, but limited only by the size of your music catalogue, creativity and inspiration. Used well you can tailor your music to whatever mood you are in. Used lazily and you end up recycling the same old tracks you always listen to in a random order.

My bet is that for most people with iPods, it's the latter. 'Shuffle' mode was a fantastic idea, but it just promotes laziness. You no longer listen to albums - just songs. Isn't that a good thing though? Doesn't that sort the musical wheat from the disjointed chaff?

Well, not really. The best albums are made to be listened to as a whole, not as a collection of singles. Some great albums simply don't have the impact as songs on an individual basis, but played together collectively in the intended context can form the most brilliant pieces. Dark Side of the Moon, Pet Sounds, Ziggy Stardust - all classics. The likes of Screamadelica, His 'N' Hers and Homework are all great examples of modern complete albums.

In the digital world I barely even know the song titles these days - you rip your CD to your library with a fleeting glance at the cover. Although I can tell you that tracks 1, 3 and 6 on the first Art Brut album are ace, they might be 7, 4 and 9 the next time they get shuffled.

As much of a breakthrough as iPods are in getting people closer to their music collection, they're having the unforeseen effect of killing the album culture that's been the heart of music for as long as we've known.

Whereas with a tape-based Walkman you'd happily listen to an album, you can skip away to your heart's content with an mp3 player - the design positively encourages lazy listening. Do that with a walkman and you'd need your own power station in batteries and a rucksack the size of a cupboard to carry the tapes.

Music downloading was popular before the iPod became big news (Napster was around in 1999), but the equipment available at the time wasn't enough to change listening habits - nobody was going to lug their PC around in their pocket. It's not until the iPod came to popularity that music became a commodity of convenience.

Today's kids are the 'Ringtone Generation', where the single rules supreme. The iTunes store appears to exist mainly to allow people to buy individual tracks rather than a complete album. When a physical CD can be purchased from play.com at the same price or cheaper than iTunes, why buy a lower quality digital version? It's even worse with lower-capacity players as it's all too tempting to only copy over the tracks you 'like'.

It doesn't have to be this way though, and I appeal to manufacturers of mp3 players to help bring albums back to life with a simple change to their user interface. And it's a really easy one.

Whenever you're listening in shuffle or playlist mode, make it simple (i.e. no more than 2 button clicks) to jump to the rest of the album. I've lost count of the times I've heard a track and wanted to listen to the rest of the album, but get completely hindered by the 'award winning' interface.

By the time I've worked out what album its on, and the fact that I've got to press 10 buttons just to navigate to it, I'm bored and want the next track. It's crazy, and it could be so much easier.

Yes, I'm lazy. Yes, I could have chose to listen to just an album in the first place. But these players are devised in a way to positively discourage you from listening to albums as they were intended. It takes 2 button clicks to get to a playlist, so why not 2 to jump to an album?

'Menu', 'Jump To Album'. Piece of piss! It's yours - it's free! My gift to you. I won't patent the idea, just put it in your bloody players.

Do this and with any luck the next Klaxons album might have more than 4 songs worth listening to.