In the world of streaming, the single has become king.
Gone are the days of running to the record store on release day, buying a brand new album that you know nothing about, and running home to listen to every single song for the next 6 hours straight… and then, over and over again until the next one comes out.
These days, you release a lead single, announce the album, and then release 5 more songs from the album every week until it drops so by the time you actually get the full album, you’ve already heard more than half of the songs on it. In some cases, you’ve already heard all of them live.
Release day used to feel like Christmas morning, now it still kind of feels like that, except you got an Amazon gift card and a pair of socks.
This trend has even caused huge artists like Blake Shelton, Rascal Flatts, and Sheryl Crow to rethink the way they release music. Recently, all three have expressed their desire to pass of full-length albums right now, and instead, focus solely on releasing singles. For Blake, his latest single “God’s Country” just went #1, but it doesn’t look like there is going to be an album to follow it up. At least, not any time soon.
Jason Aldean on the other hand, thinks that approach sucks.
“I couldn’t wait to go every Tuesday to the record store and buy whatever was out, and go home and look at the liner notes… I just was wired like that,” he tells ABC News.
“I enjoy gettin’ in the studio, gettin’ in a groove, when you’re in there cutting eight songs in two days, and you get locked in the stuff. And I don’t know how you do that? You go in every few months and cut one song? That just sounds like it sucks to me. That’s not the way I would like to make music. It’s not why I got into it.”
“I’ll make ’em as long as I feel like people are buying ’em,” he added.
You hear that Blake? Put out a damn a record.
