WSJ’s Recording Nonsense

A very misguided editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

In the era of the online music store — even if you buy from iTunes rather than stealing from LimeWire, the problem is the same — no one knows how to listen to a complete album anymore. Everything is slanted toward the hit single. This means that the music industry is oriented toward one-hit wonders rather than consummate musicians, and talent development is just not worth the trouble.

The focus on singles is nothing new. With the exception of a few major artists music sales have always been dominated by single hit makers. And it’s not as if a single has to be the creation of a horrible band. The Rolling Stones were a singles band. Sly and the Family Stone were a singles band. The Ramones were a singles band. The Beatles were a singles band during Beatlemania in the early 60s. Everyone before the 60s was a singles artist. Virtually every blues artist, every folk artist.

This is another example of that often repeated myth that the album is the only musical art form. There’s room for both EPs, LPs and anything else the artist wants to throw at you. At this point in our history the size of an album is no longer limited by how much space has to be filled or how many songs can be squeezed onto a pressing. Musicians have unprecedented freedom to control the length and composition of their releases. That’s a good thing.

Yes, the record industry is dead, but recording doesn’t have to be. Look at the experiments of Radiohead and the Nine Inch Nails. Look at the reinventions made possible by youtube, Audacity/Logic, myspace/facebook and bittorrent. It may be harder for a major band to get a release to hundereds of millions of fans, but it’s much easier for hundreds of bands to get releases in the hands of thousands of fans.

New musicians now have easier access to creative and distributive opportunities at a lower cost than any time in recording history. Democracy and Individual Mass Production have finally come to popular music. Or as you say, “Hegemony is over.” The state of our music is strong.

Three additional short arguments:

1. As for the idea that musicians have it harder now, I’d say it’s bunk. Where can you find musicians with massive popular sales, money to spare, influence on millions of fans and plenty of drugs? Rap. The genre WSJ writers bemoan and fear.

2. Limewire is for novices. Bittorrent is the preferred method of downloading music. Massive sites like Demonoid, what.cd, waffles.fm and (the late) oink.cd allow you to download the popular and obscure back catalogs of artists from Lil’ Wayne to Django Reinhardt. Entire albums. Oh, and they have singles too. Plus last time I checked, there was some small retailer called iTunes that let you download entire albums at your discretion.

3. The latest Batman movie sort of blew your Star Wars argument out of the water.

PS: Pete Yorn is 34. He has only released three albums.