Response The playlist isn’t close to killing the album
Radio 1’s head of music claims the album’s being toppled by the playlist. In fact, the two complement each other.
Within DIY’s June 2014 triple-issue, which looks at the most exciting aspects of music today, 2014 is hailed as the “most interesting and unpredictable” time to discover music. Online’s dominance and the rise of streaming services have contributed to a scattering of influence, where curators are no longer easy to pick apart from the chancers. More than anything the feature looks at the role of playlists and whether these often algorithm-based collections of songs could improve any further from their current state. Chances are they will - but that might not necessarily increase their impact.
Radio 1 head George Ergatoudis - responsible for the country’s most influential playlist, albeit of a different shape to the traditional mood-shapers on Spotify - came out this morning suggesting that playlists will in actual fact outlive the album, that the album is “edging closer to extinction.” He made this statement citing a New York Times article about Songza, a playlist service that’s just been acquired by Google for a reported sum of $39 million dollars. This, combined with Pandora and Spotify’s value, is enough reason to make business insiders go gaga for the playlist - it has bucks, momentum, the whole shebang. But there’s life in the album, and it’s anything but an old dog.
“Playlists and albums aren’t two distinct opposites.”
Listening to a selection of songs online isn’t a seamless experience. The process of arranging these tracks might be, but when it comes to slogging through an hour’s worth of music in any situation, the average listener gets fidgety, trigger-happy. They might hear one song that has a particularly impact - their response might then be to click on a specific artist or album and explore a back catalogue. Playlists and albums aren’t two distinct opposites - in 2014, they actually feed into each other.
The idea that this generation is scatty and short of attention when it comes to their listening habits seems to be a weak one. Previous decades weren’t free of skipped tracks - everyone’s always had their favourites. 7” singles sold like hot cakes and yes, tastes were more limited because collections could only be so large, but loyalty to specific artists hasn’t waned to the point of extinction. Albums continue to have their place because - and this has always been the case - some musicians are simply better stood as ‘album artists’. They make records that aren’t chugging out one-hit wonders that come from completely different planets - these records exist as a coherent experience. This experience can and does get interrupted, but when has that not been the case? Ed Sheeran’s recent ‘X’-rated assault on the Top 10 points to the fact that listeners are still holding out for full-lengths, willing to involve themselves in every single track. Surely one effect of streaming numbers being incorporated into the charts will be that perceived ‘album artists’ have even more of an impact.
“If all you do on Spotify is listen to what’s on the radio, then what’s the point of Spotify?”
— Mark Williamson, Head of Artist Services in Europe, Spotify
A purpose of playlists isn’t to drown out the album or give further credence to chart-dominating artists - it’s to explore. Spotify’s Mark Williamson recently told DIY: “If all you do on Spotify is listen to what’s on the radio, then what’s the point of Spotify? We have a huge interest in getting more people to listen to more music of all kinds.” If anything, playlists are the first step. Their influence in terms of music discovery is unarguable, but they’re by no means the end point. These days a musician’s entire discography is one click away, and more often than not this can lead to binge sessions.
Playlists still have some way to go, too. Beats Music offers a more expert-oriented means of curation, but attempts to provide a wide, varying range of moods still needs work. “People like to try and pitch human vs computer recommendation as black and white. Of course it isn’t, and we know that. We’re being greedy, we want the best of both,” says Williamson, citing Spotify’s purchase of The Echo Nest as an attempt to bring a more human element into a algorithm-based service. It’s the most sophisticated, ultra-detailed collection of data devoted to music. Going way beyond an “if you like this, then…” style of recommendation, it takes into account tiny factors, similar to how the newly acquired Songza works with the Weather Channel to pick out music based on the air temperature (or something to that effect). Regardless of how this develops, playlists will continue to point towards a more established form of music listening - that of sitting back and being immersed in a longer work. Actual album sales have been dwindling for years, and the industry’s doing everything in its power to combat and accept this. But lack of sales doesn’t qualify as an actual death. So long as artists and listeners still have faith in a full body of work, it won’t be disappearing anytime soon.
Featuring Yard Act, Death Cab For Cutie, Graham Coxon, Maisie Peters and more.