These are interesting Times

These are Interesting Times
Originally posted at Ghostland.com April 2007

Did I just hear someone say, these are interesting times? That’s an understatement. You know one of the neat things about working at a radio station (but not on the programming side), is you get to see the world of music from a slightly different perspective.

Did you hear the latest? They’re now saying that full-length CD’s may soon be a thing of the past. That’s right, according to a couple of articles that just came across my desk, so many people have reverted to just downloading singles (legally or illegally) that some of the major record labels are beginning to question the value of producing full-length CD’s. I find it fascinating that the music business is always so quick to blame technology, consumer behaviour, pirating or just about anything other than their own actions. The major labels see themselves as victims.

Now I don’t know about you but I’m having a little trouble seeing how the progressive rock genre is going to adapt to this kind of a market. Oh-yeah…I forgot; progressive rock doesn’t really care about singles! This is one musical style that was made for a longer format. I guess it’s possible to have 25-minute or 50-minute single tracks. It’s been done before but somehow I just don’t see it taking off in a big way.

All of this hand-wringing on the part of the major labels has got reporters everywhere jumping on the new “Digital World” of music and how it’s changing everything. What’s being missed in all the scribbling is that it’s the major labels that have brought this mayhem upon themselves. They started it and have been perpetuating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. So I would like to offer up an alternative reason for why we see this happening.

Let’s set the “way-back” machine to the late fifties and sixties. This was a time where rock and roll was really just getting started and the medium of the day was the 7-inch 45-rpm single. Radio stations everywhere, if they were playing rock ‘n’ roll were playing singles. It was the heyday of the Top-40 radio formats. And the record companies were happy to oblige sending out loads of singles. The radio stations did their part by playing the singles that the record companies were pushing. And everything was going along fine until the late sixties.

That’s when bands started to focus on putting more into their musical creation than just a single. They started working on whole albums. One of the first was the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When that came out even my local Top-40 radio station set time aside to play the whole thing from start to finish, non-stop. And then it got even more complicated. The FM frequency began throwing out the classical and easy-listening music is favour of, yeah you guessed it, psychedelic and progressive rock music. Everything was moving to focus on albums. Singles were quickly falling out of favour as many rock bands shunned the hits. Why bother having a hit single when you could have a hit album. The record companies played along with this idea. After all it sold product and they could still release singles of other artists anyway. The record companies just couldn’t seem to pull themselves away from the singles scene.

For a number of years everything was fine. The album bands and the singles market co-existed side-by-side even though the 45-rpm had all but disappeared. But then by the late seventies and early eighties the focus started get a bit blurry. There were still many album bands out there, and certainly progressive rock had entrenched itself as perhaps the leading proponents of the format. But bands were starting to pop up again with a focus on getting a hit single. So naturally the record companies were more than happy to oblige. It has always been easier for them to push singles than it was to push albums.

I was a radio programmer during this time and let me tell you the record companies really apply the pressure when they want a single to get airplay. It means the difference between receiving other new releases or not in some cases. It wasn’t heavy handed all the time, but there was no question they were trying to control the situation and if a radio station strayed from the game plan they could feel the sting later.

So anyway, here we are today and for the past 10-15 years the record companies have been pushing singles on the air and radio stations have bent over backwards to play singles. Most radio stations today don’t even get full CD’s sent to them much anymore. The major labels simply produce a sampler CD of the single tracks they’re pushing each month. The radio station is expected to pick from the list whatever suits their format.

Is it any wonder that the record buying public is supposedly only interested in singles these days? That’s all they’re exposed to. And research shows that when it comes to new music the vast majority still look to radio to provide that music. In the time of albums, stations would play maybe three or four tracks off a new album, listeners would get a feel for the whole thing and buy it. Today listeners get one song so if they like it they buy that one song. And technology, digital downloads have made it even easier to make that happen.

The record companies have no business crying foul when they’ve created and fostered the very environment that is contributing to their demise. They wanted stations to play singles…radio stations played the singles…and the public is buying the singles. And now they’re worried that no ones buying full-length CDs. Well imagine that!

I’m sorry but I don’t feel your pain.

What impact will this have on the progressive rock genre? I will suggest very little since the prog genre is pretty much out of the mainstream and more than anything relied on more than a single to convey its musical mission. No my guess is that whatever musical technological format we come to adopt the progressive rock genre will continue to thrive creating wonderful music. And I’m putting my money on the full length CD being around for a while yet.

At least that’s what I think. I’d love to hear your thoughts.