The lost album
I've been doing some thinking about music as a cohesive work (albums) versus the throwaway single song. The sixties brought us "Rubber Soul" and "Are You Experienced" and the album came into our homes. I am sure that the record companies were delighted to see the shift from selling a few singles to pulling in much more money with full albums. But there seem to be few of these quality cohesive works offered to the public in the last ten years. As Kurt Cobain shot himself, it seems like the soul of music went down with him.

Fast-food culture
Record companies have had two cakes and have been eating them both for some time now. The music that we buy has been morphed into more of a consumer-cycle of "safe" songs engineered for the widest audience available. As the consumers were given less choices in stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, only mainstream Cd's were purchased. It is very difficult to shop for any back-catalog  of any artist. Often what is found is a "Greatest Hits" CD along with the latest offering.  Try to find a classic like Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska."  It is even more difficult to find works by artists not being promoted by record companies. While it may be easy to find a Nelly CD, try finding one by the Raveonettes or The Libertines. It is not surprising that consumers have been buying fewer Cd's.

Much has been written about digital music (aka mp3's) being a revolution and that albums are dead. Twenty somethings are beginning to purchase single songs from on-line music services rather than put their hard-earned cash down for Cd's that consist of 2 singles sandwiched around 16 songs of filler. This is a trend that no doubt will grow but there is an ugly side to this. While consumers seem to have more choice, a lost art is gone. We are giving in to an industry mentality of  providing disposable product by hand-picked "artists" versus works of art created by artists.  

Be careful what you wish for
It is not unreasonable to think that in the future, record companies may find it more cost effective to offer music through the direct marketing of a digital download rather than actual packaging of paper and plastic Cd's. There are problems with this, at least in the short-run. Any format now available for mass-consumer download is far inferior to the quality of a CD. Most audiophiles would agree that vinyl albums had more sound information via analog delivery than digital Cd's and as we move forward to compressed files even more information is lost. I'm sure that a newer technology will arrive and this will be a lost concern but for now we are losing something. And it's not just the quality of the sound, but the packaging itself. Gone would be the artwork, which in my opinion adds to the overall feel of the music.

While compressed audio files are convenient for people to swap music files and transfer to portable devices they are still lacking as a business deliverable when compared to good old fashioned CD's.