The era of Album Rock is long gone..

The 70s was known as the era of Album Rock.  Bands put out great albums, and some of them weren't necessarily the world's most radio friendly, but they were great albums that had themes and flowed from track to track smoothly.  You could tell what the artist was going for.  These "Albums" were more about the artist making their music than the record label trying to make money.

Not that Pink Floyd didn't rake in the dough.

Pink Floyd was one of the great album artists of all time - in large part due to the creative control that Roger Waters exercised over the band.  Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall are two great examples.

I can't claim that I blogged this years ago (but look at this), however I did have a conversation with my friend Jason a few weeks ago on the topic.

The album era is long gone, and not only that, the era of albums may be coming to a close.  And the New York Times agrees with me.

"Albums" in the 80s and 90s were just collections of songs which usually consisted of a hit or two and then "filler" which the record label had to pay for to justify releasing an album.  In the day of internet music, with people buying only the songs they're interested in thanks to ITunes, or just listening to the songs they want via some subscription service like Rhapsody (my favorite), what's the point of releasing the "filler"?

I think as we move forward, we're going to find musicians recording and releasing songs - not albums.  Record a song, put it up on myspace, blog about it, and watch it go.  Radio stations don't get albums anyway, do they?  The only Billboard chart actually based on album sales is the Billboard Album Chart.  Talk about irrelevant.