The Current State Of Music

ome21 — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:45:38 +0000

When is the last time you’ve actually went out and purchased an album? Recently IF you’ve purchased an album you’ve done so digitally. I remember the days when I used to anticipate an album’s release… Opening up the packaging, being hit with that fresh CD smell, poppin in the album and actually feeling a sense of excitement with what I was listening to. Nowadays it seems like that feeling or experience is being lost, for more reasons than one. We are in the digital age. Retail album sales are down, digital album sales are at an all time high. Major record labels are scrambling to find alternative ways to make money. This plays a role in the music industry being so ringtone heavy and single-driven. It seems that artists don’t put as much emphasis on the quality of their entire albums. In my opinion if you’ve listen to most hip-hop/r&b mainstream albums these days they consist of mainly unnecessary album fillers with a few solid songs scattered here and there. I think artists are so focused on creating that one hit single that they failing to realize there’s no longevity in inconsistency. Looking back on this past year I can’t recall any classic mainstream albums that I thoroughly enjoyed. I’m talking about a front-to-back album, an album where each song could be a potential single. Aside from artists such as Lupe Fiasco (who put out a cohesive album with The Cool) mainstream artists that put out solid albums are rare and few. They don’t follow the current mold however their record sales suffer for it. There are artists out there that are willing to go against the grain and bring change to the current hip-hop scene but change will never occur if the listener doesn’t support it. Are we allowing record label execs dictate what’s “hot”? How do you feel about the current state of the music industry?

-Kyle, Open Minds Entertainment

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The Current State Of Music