That's true in a lot of cases. I played some vinyl to my youngest sister not so long ago (she doesn't even have a CD player, she's purely mp3s) and she didn't even seem to care about the sound quality.

I didn't even have internet access until I was 17, and even then it was a shitty dial-up connection so downloading music was out of the question. In a way I'm kind of grateful because I probably wouldn't appreciate physical music and decent sound quality the way I do now. What I'm really worried about though is young people destroying their hearing with mp3 players from a very early age.

Poor baby. I didn't have an internet connection until I was 27. :laughing:

By internet connection do you mean telegraph? ;)

clk... clk... clk-clk-clk... clk... clk-clk... clk-clik

Dude, I didn't even have cable tv until I was 19.


I'm not going to quote the whole thing but...

First off, welcome to being old :thumb:

I don't think mp3 players will go away. My ipod has become THE key device in road trips that take me through big chunks of rural Canada that have little to no cellphone service, never mind active wi-fi. Streaming anything? Forget it.

On the actual bigger issue at hand Jackhammer nails it, I can't really add much to his comment. I really like the bit about how the media and our peers would push particular albums, it's a situation where the expansion and widening of the target market reduces the potential for upward success. It's transforming from a pyramid to a pancake.

To be honest I looked at this weeks album charts and it had the usual mix of pop, R&B, hip hop, indie, folk and compilations as it probably would have done 15 years ago so I don't really see anything changing there. As for the singles chart, they've been full of one hit wonders forever, here's this weeks singles chart from 1997..

1 Olive You're Not Alone
2 Sarah Brightman & Andrea Bocelli Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro)
3 Eternal featuring BeBe Winans I Wanna Be The Only One
4 Katrina & The Waves Love Shine A Light
5 The Cardigans Lovefool
6 No Mercy Please Don't Go
7 Shola Ama You Might Need Somebody
8 The Rembrandts I'll Be There For You
9 Damage Wonderful Tonight
10 R Kelly I Believe I Can Fly
11 Toni Braxton I Don't Want To
12 DJ Quicksilver Bellissima
13 Rosie Gaines Closer Than Close
14 Elvis Presley Always On My Mind
15 North & South I'm A Man Not A Boy
16 Blackstreet Don't Leave Me
17 911 Bodyshakin'
18 Placebo Bruise Pristine
19 Ginuwine Tell Me Do U Wanna
20 Aaliyah If Your Girl Only Knew / One In A Million

I mean seriously how many of those do you remember?

I also think it's also too easy to get caught up in the 'everybody downloads now' way of thinking, they don't. My sister has zero interest in gadgets & computers apart from facebook & still buys CDs, so do a lot of the people I work with. My parents wouldn't know how to find & download anything from the internet if I left them detailed instructions, and even then they have no way of playing MP3's on their sound system.
It's worth noting that CD sales still account for 3 of every 4 albums sold in the UK.

While this future you're predicting might happen I think you're going to have to wait for at least 2 generations of people to die off first.

I probably download more music than anyone on here, but I also own several hundred CD's and I have been buying music on a weekly basis of late.

I may not have been around back in the day, but there is no doubt that music as a whole is flourishing at the moment. The idea of an "album" losing it's value does not hold any weight to me.

There will always be artists who create worthwhile albums, and there will always be artists who include a load of filler. That is not a new thing.

Maybe the idea of the physical copy is diminishing, but it certainly isn't hindering the production of great music.

The ****?

It was being used on a British Telecom advert at the time.

Just playing Devil's advocate...you can cache playlists and albums from Spotify on your phone for offline use. I'm just trying to think of this from the perspective of a young kid just getting into music. With it so readily available, why go for the hunt? For the time being, holdouts such as ourselves will keep the market going, but I honestly think it will be diminishing sooner rather than later.

Haha, that's a fair point. However, I can also name many many bands and artists from 1997 that are remembered and/or are relevant today. I think the amount of THOSE acts is diminishing. Then again, maybe I'm just feeling really disillusioned about music at the moment and it's affecting my opinion.

Maybe it's just me but I really can't think of a defining album from the last decade. One that everyone and their dog owned. I can think of several from the 60's all the way up to the late 90's. That in itself makes me feel as if the album art form is just not what it used to be. Sure, I can' think of albums I myself loved and of course if you look hard enough there is great music out there, but I'm talking about music everyone can get behind...even casual listeners.