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Originally Posted by sage691  Probably because compared to the rest of the worthless garbage that was being promoted at the time, this stuff was 1,000,000 times better -- which aint saying much! |
Not really, I can cite plenty of acts that I'd have considered better at the time. The reason those albums sold was because in most cases they had several big hits, and the album CD was still the only format in which music could be consumed, and music as an entertainment medium was still at the forefront of consumers' spending habits.
Today, music has lost so much intrinsic value, primarily because A. there is so much of it out there everywhere, and B. it can be consumed for free. Yes, quality is part of it, but not a primary consideration, given that the biggest sellers today are your Nickelbacks and Miley Cyruses.
The kids coming of age today were born into a world where to them the internet always existed, and music was always free (or easily acquired or listened to for free). The idea of them purchasing albums as individual commodities is like trying to sell someone the newest horse and buggy. Hell, I'm no spring chicken and I can't remember the last time I purchased an "album". Even with artists I come across that I like, more often than not I'll just listen to their stuff streaming on imeem, or fire up You Tube, and for the individual songs I like the best, maybe I'll buy the song on iTunes. And forget about CD's. I haven't purchased a physical music product in probably 2 years, not because there was nothing worthwhile, but because the CD is an obsolete method of listening to music, not just for me, but for more and more of the general buying public. And the precipitous drop in numbers in just the past 5 years bear this out.
People I know who have used Spotify say that it (or something like it) is the wave of the future, and I believe them. And the future is all about consuming music via bundled subscription and streaming, not purchasing individual albums, or even an ownership paradigm at all. Which means that in the future, how we gauge artists' success will be much more like radio airplay charts than they are album sales charts. The future beckons...