I am sure that this is not the first time that you will hear the statement that digital downloads have killed the album. Long gone are the days when we were forced to listen to 11 of the 12 songs on an album to get to our favorite song. Hell with the implementation of the cassette we started getting that itch to just press fast forward; and with cd's it became even easier. And now, in the wonderful digital age that we are in, we have the option to once again just buy that one song from that one artist and neglect the rest of it, if we so choose.
Notice I say once again. This is not the first time where single song purchases were available. Remember cassingles? And the 45 was even there before that wonderful invention. However both of these attempts did not have as much success in killing full album sales as the digital single. Is this possibly because even with cassingles and 45's we were given a "B-side"? Or is it because we simply did not want to acquire more junk in our little disco boxes and figured that it might just save us some space in our cassette holders if we just went out and bought the whole tape. Who knows.
I am a fan of the musicians that I listen to first and foremost. As an artist and poet myself I would feel cheated if someone only read one line of my work; or only looked at one piece of the work. Embrace it all. You have to read / see / hear the whole thing to truly grasp what that artist is saying.
Lastly; single song purchases of artists will always occur; there is nothing that we can do to stop it. There will always be individuals out there that want to have the top 40 on their iPod for their own discretionary play. Which to me makes no sense. If you wanted to hear all the hits all the time then just buy a damn radio, and skip the $200-$400 dollars on an iPod.
So buy the album people; the whole album. Think of all the gems that you could find!
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