Opinion - News Analysis   

Dangers of move to online singles

John Harris

According to the press release, it’s all about blazing a trail for a “radical new music industry business model.” Stripping back the corporate-speak, the story becomes clear enough. The members of the Northern Irish rock band Ash have vowed to never release another album, and to devote their lives to a succession of downloadable singles. “When you’re tied to the album format,” said their singer and songwriter Tim Wheel er, “you find yourself waiting six months between finishing a record and releasing it. By leaving this behind, we can enter a new phase of spontaneity and creativity.”

Despite having amassed 17 Top 40 hits, they have never managed to breathe the same rarefied air as Radioheads and Coldplays, so the news may not send the music business into a spin. But plenty of people will be av idly watching their subsequent manoeuvres and doubtless following suit. Given that downloads will soon account for 25 per cent of music sales and 75-minute CDs look increasingly outmoded regularly chucking out stand-alone songs looks like a pretty smart strategy.

On the artistic front, meanwhile, Tim Wheeler can be forgiven for raving about the band’s prospects in terms of liberation. Current music industry practice, after all, condemns any half-successful group to slave in the studio, produce what one musician once poetically described to me as a “big creative dump” and then robotically tour the world for endless months. By the time album A has reached the shops, the brightest bands tend to be already on to B, C and D but must obediently stick to playing yesterday’s tunes.

But never mind them. For the rest of us, the looming death of what is still known as the album should cause no little alarm. Doesn’t the obligation to attempt a grand artistic statement serve as a reliable litmus test? What, for the true fan, will replace the giddy expectation that comes from knowing that your currently cloistered favourites are about to return with their latest opus? And, most important of all, what about the mystical process whereby a collection of music glues itself into the culture? Songs may powerfully denote passing moments, but you surely need more to truly soundtrack your time.

Occasionally an album’s impact will be a matter of a grand thematic conceit. At their most magical, however, the contents of albums tap into wider currents along more alchemical lines. Even if the zeitgeist remains uncaptured, plenty of albums are built around what the American rock writer Paul Williams whimsically called “songs that like to be listened to together.” Break them apart, and you lose something essential.

Still, our accelerated culture has increasingly little time for such pleasures. Best, in a world of time poverty and the promise of personalisation, to stick to songs, effortlessly downloaded into whatever setting you fancy. Without context, they can sell cars, accompany goals of the week on Sky Sports and then crashland between other incongruous pieces as yet another iPod is switched to shuffle. Such, I fear, is what Tim Wheeler calls “the art of the single for the digital age.” At the risk of sounding hopelessly analogue, heaven help us. —

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

BJP’s bluster
Bright ideas for energy efficiency
Seeking to make fire without smoke
This boom has echoes of the 1980s
Dangers of move to online singles
Water access and citizens’ movements
Shiv Sena versus BJP
President’s election
New perspective

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu