> In the 90s I was buying CDs with five good songs and five filler for £15.
That is unfortunate. In the early 2000s, I was cleaning up buying used CDs for $1 on Half.com and Amazon.
The whole thing about "1 good song on a 10-song album" is a remnant of Steve Jobs' iPod marketing pitch designed to get people buying songs piecemeal for 99c on iTunes.
Regular people buy music if they want to support the artist. Trying to maximize the number of good songs per dollar spent is a kind of alien calculus that's led us down this path of algorithm-driven one-hit-wonder hell.
> The whole thing about "1 good song on a 10-song album" is a remnant of Steve Jobs' iPod marketing pitch
Yup. I remember people used claim "piracy would ruin the quality of music" - but the truth is, it's these streaming services that are killing the art of the album.
True, but don’t forget that much of the mid-20th century was “single” focused, and the concept of a full cohesive LP only came about in the mid-60’s (there are earlier examples for but think Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, or The Beatles). Meanwhile, most people still consume top-40 style hits from the radio, etc. for decades after.
That is unfortunate. In the early 2000s, I was cleaning up buying used CDs for $1 on Half.com and Amazon.
The whole thing about "1 good song on a 10-song album" is a remnant of Steve Jobs' iPod marketing pitch designed to get people buying songs piecemeal for 99c on iTunes.
Regular people buy music if they want to support the artist. Trying to maximize the number of good songs per dollar spent is a kind of alien calculus that's led us down this path of algorithm-driven one-hit-wonder hell.