Oh Yes! Concept albums make comeback as bands battle single downloads

Published on Sunday 7 January 2007 00:54

COSMIC, man. The full-length album, once the benchmark of a band's excellence but now a format seriously threatened by the boom in downloadable singles, may have found salvation in an unlikely place.

Record store owners say the much maligned "concept album", a staple of prog-rock behemoths like Pink Floyd and Yes, is making a comeback as increasingly desperate bands try to convince music fans to buy the whole record and not just download singles from the internet.

The rise of the MP3 player, alongside easily available and cheap to buy downloads from internet sites such as iTunes, has created a pick-and-mix culture among music fans who, rather than pay for a complete album, just buy their favourite songs.

According to statistics released last week by the British Phonographic Industry, the number of single tracks sold last year increased by 40%. Sales rocketed from 48 million in 2005 to 67 million in 2006. More than 70% of those sales were digital downloads. Over the same period album sales fell 2.5%, from 159 million in 2005 to 155 million last year.

But modern bands such as My Chemical Romance, Green Day and Muse are fighting back by stressing their album's "concept" status and encouraging fans that it is worth their while to buy entire albums.

Andrew Tully, area manager for Avalanche, an independent chain of music stores, said over the past year the idea of a concept album had become fashionable again. He said bands such as the Killers had "talked up" its concept status before the release of their current hit album.

Tully said: "It makes logical sense for the bands to do this. It's obvious to them that sales are going down because less and less people think it's worth their while to buy an entire album. The bands think this undermines their record.

"It's a strange one because concept albums had their heyday in the 60s and 70s and today's kids, with their short attention spans, seem unlikely to indulge bands if they want to write 20-minute songs."

But Peter Cruickshank, a Glasgow music wholesaler who supplies independent shops all over the country, said

it was becoming harder and harder to make a living selling albums. He said: "I can see where the bands are coming from. They need to do something. But I think the answer to competing is selling cheap and cheerful albums."

Meanwhile, Peter Jamieson, the BPI chairman, is happy to celebrate the rebirth of the single. Before downloading became popular many industry observers thought the format would soon disappear.

He said: "Instead, we are now looking at a market which has doubled in three years, thanks to downloads."