Spanning a little over 120 minutes, TTPD is spread across 31 tracks, while Unreal Unearth is 16-tracks long and clocks about an hour of play.
Taylor Swift and Hozier, two of the most influential popular artists of our times, have recently had big releases — The Tortured Poets’ Department (TTPD) and Unreal Unearth, respectively. Spanning a little over 120 minutes, TTPD is spread across 31 tracks, while Unreal Unearth is 16-tracks long and clocks about an hour of play. Bear with me as I nerd out over these tedious details because, as a millennial with a waning attention span, as I sat with these latest releases, a question cropped up: Is anyone listening to albums these days?
Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are plenty of Swifties and Hozes (yes, that’s what we should be calling them), who light candles at the altar of their favourite artists and have cult-like album-listening sessions. But their faces may turn red if you ask them how many albums of their admitted favourite artists they have actually heard (from start to finish, okay?).
Before this argument turns purely anecdotal, some stats: According to a 2016 survey (‘Music Consumption: The Overall Landscape’) done by the American non-profit organisation Music Business Association, 46 per cent of the 3,014 respondents preferred listening to singles. In comparison, playlists accounted for 31 per cent of the total listening time, while albums accounted for only 22 per cent.
So what’s the big deal?
What’s the big deal, you may ask, about listening to singles or playlists over albums? Nothing, really. It’s a laissez-faire system when it comes to music consumption and no snob should dictate how you must listen to music. Besides, does late-stage capitalism even allow people enough leisure time to consume hour-long aural experiences (read: Music albums)? People listen to podcasts when they drive, go for a walk, cook or during any other activity. It’s the same with music; no one wants to sit and just listen to music.
Nevertheless, let me climb on the metaphorical soapbox and suggest that album listening could be beneficial for two reasons — patience and the quality of music produced by artists. In an age where fewer people are picking up books — instead, spending their time doom scrolling on social media apps — sitting through an album seems boring and insipid. Listening to an album then may help us expand our attention span.
Yet, the virtue of patience cannot be cultivated if the art itself, for lack of a better word, is vapid. This brings me to my second point, the quality of music.
Why no one listens to albums anymore
The reason why no one listens to entire albums these days may well be because (pop) music isn’t made to be consumed as such. There’s a Wikipedia entry titled the “Album era” — a bygone “era” of the bespoke music form. Thanks to digital music streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, music is distributed differently than how it was till the early 2000s. With about Rs 100 a month (or with the patience to bear frequent advertisements), you have access to a million artists’ music at your fingertips. While this has brought people closer to popular and obscure artists, music has lost its sheen from when it used to arrive in the physical format of a cassette, CD, or, in the case of our parents and their parents, a vinyl record. Digital streaming has affected music sales, forcing record companies to focus on singles. Similarly, the trend of listening to playlists further diminishes the value of listening to a single, long piece of music that deals with a common theme, aka, the album.
The TikTok-ification of music
The advent of social media has further changed music consumption — people have started discovering songs through various platforms, as opposed to organically or through recommendations. The success of a song and an artist now depends on how many times it is used in a TikTok video or an Instagram reel. While artists have found a potent tool to market themselves and give fans a peep into their lives, the virality of a song has become the focal point of how a song is composed. Popular music today is “muzak” — purposely generic, dumbed-down and generally uninspiring.
Don’t get me wrong, not all popular music today is bland — and don’t let any curmudgeon tell you otherwise. But it’s the music-listening habits of today that have called for easy consumption and as a result, the proliferation of more and more “easy” music. Today’s music is preferred as white noise, played in the background. This is why there is a case to be made for the return of the album — so that artists take the listener seriously and don’t treat them just like a demographic. Due to the expanse of a larger coherent album, an artist is pushed to explore newer grounds as opposed to finding comfort in the tried and tested. However, the demand for “better” music only holds ground if we are to prioritise the importance of music in our lives in the first place. If you don’t think music enhances your life, I think I just wasted 10 minutes of your time.
aditya.vaddepalli@expressindia.com
