Guitarist says bands have to adapt in a world where people work '3 times as hard for a 3rd of the money'
                     
Skid Row's Dave 'Snake' Sabo says albums are a dying format because people don't have time to listen to them anymore.
 
The guitarist says musicians have to adapt to the modern world where most people work longer hours for less money. And for Skid Row, that adaptation means releasing shorter EPs instead of albums.
 
He tells Rock 'N' Load: "This year not one artist has had a million-selling record in the United States. Coldplay came the closest, apparently. The only thing that sold over a million records is the soundtrack to the movie Frozen. And so that's just a clear indication that we are in a different time.
 
"And that's okay — we don't lament the past. You have to adapt and navigate through what's thrown at you, and that's what we're doing. That's the reason why we're releasing EPs — you don't wanna inundate people with too much music, because they just don't have the time. No one has the ability anymore to sit down for an hour with their headphones on and experience a new record.
 
"And that sucks. But that's life. People are working three times as hard for a third of the money these days. It's just a different economic landscape and people just don't have the luxury."
 
Sabo also believes TV talent shows like The X Factor and American Idol fail to recognise the work of songwriters.
 
He adds: "Those shows have diluted what songwriting and music is about. On one level, it shows great songs being played, but I think what the audience gets out of it more is not that great songs are being sung, but the idea that a person can just go out and sing and become a pop star and not really realising that writing a great song is an art form.
 
"That's not to say that being a great singer isn't – it is. But there's more to it, and it can't be cookie cutter. And that's what those shows have succeeded in diluting the power of writing great music, in a sense. I wish the songs they sang in those shows, that they showcased the songwriters as well, that they made mention of that, so people would realise there's people behind these familiar songs they're singing."
 
 
(From Classic Rock Magazine)

There are still bands?
 
I thought all the bands got old and members croaked.
I was thinking there are two members left from The Beatles and The Who...maybe they
could form something that would sell a million. The Whootles.

spacey
There are still bands?
 
I thought all the bands got old and members croaked.
I was thinking there are two members left from The Beatles and The Who...maybe they
could form something that would sell a million. The Whootles.

THE WHOOTLES!

There are lots of reasons albums are a dying format and his whine whine version is probably the weakest reason.  Nostalgia is truly a beats of tunnel vision.  Songwriters, unless they happen to be performers as well, have rarely gotten that much attention compared to the front men in music.  The rare ones that did were also marketing geniuses who did a lot more than write songs.  I don't recall popular music programs of yesteryear like American Bandstand, Midnight Special or even Soul Train focusing on songwriters. They focused on hits, whether one-hit wonders or music legends. Pop Stars who don't write their own songs is not a new phenomena either.  I highly doubt time is a major factor. People listen to music as much as the year did and have more means to bring music with them than they ever did.  You couldn't take your Frank Zappa album with you back in the early 70's.  Even the walkman was not invented.  Now you can take every album you ever owned on one device if you choose. Albums don't sell as well because music marketing realized focusing on singles was a way to generate quick sales with less investment in artists. 
 
The switch to singles driven sales began in the 90's before digital based music became the norm. Labels could launch a strong single and albums were bought before people had a chance to realize the hit song was the only good song on the album.  I know of one group that the label was in such a rush to put out an album that they gambled on releasing the group's demo as the album.  It generated sales but probably ruined the group's career before it was really launched. Albums don't sell that well because most albums aren't very good in the pop world.  Gone are the days of blindly buying an album without listening to it.  Even pirates tend to download the whole album and delete most of the songs on it. There are lots of reasons for that trend as well. One big reason is the dominant producers in the pop world don't come cheap. The guy that produces most of Justin Timberlake's albums charges between 500k to a million per song because most of his songs end up being hits.  Only people of Timberlake's stature can afford producers of that type on an entire album.  Most settle for ponying up for a hit or 2 and having lesser tier producers on the rest of the songs.

i listen to entire albums all the time.
 
usually, in the background while doing something else,
but i'm always listening.
 
 
thing is,
there are very few NEW albums, that i really care to listen to from beginning to end.
 
seems to me the older classic rock stuff, had more meat.

The idea that the demands of employment are responsible for the decline in album sales is ridiculous. Perhaps recording artists are working three times as hard for a third of the money, but most people are not working three times as many hours as their parents. Album listening has fallen because the competing opportunities/demands on leisure time are so much more appealing to the average person that the idea of sitting in a quiet room with the stereo playing seems like a waste of time. Albums hit their heyday at a time when broadcast TV in many markets was limited to a handful of channels and video games consisted of bouncing an imaginary ball back and forth between two imaginary paddles on the TV screen. Given the option to stream high definition movies onto a 60 inch plasma screen, or play massive online games, the passive action of listening to the same tunes in the same order over and over again pales by comparison. Most people who are listening to music now are probably doing so when they cannot do much of anything more entertaining...driving etc. Or they are consuming music as the background of some other entertainment format. The album organizational format is not really useful in that context.

Leadfoot

spacey
There are still bands?
 
I thought all the bands got old and members croaked.
I was thinking there are two members left from The Beatles and The Who...maybe they
could form something that would sell a million. The Whootles.

THE WHOOTLES!

Better yet, add in Gilmour and Mason to form the Pink Whootles.

Wow - forum deleted my post!

Take 2: 
 
I'm w/ Bats - I listen to albums all the time. Always have, always will. OTOH, the album has to be worth listening, and not many current ones are.
 
There's an entire generation out there that has the attention span of a goldfish. The paradox is that albums used to last 30-40 minutes - now they seem to average the double.  Even the good one run out of breath after 40 minutes. That's 10 times too much for people who are used to have their attention stimulated by something new every few seconds.
 
As for the work thing, I'm not buying it.
 
My parents worked their butt off, sometimes two jobs to make ends meet - but they listened to albums. 
 
What they didn't do is sit in front of the TV and watch 2 seasons of a series in one night. Neither did they spend hours aimlessly surfing the internet.
 
They didn't have access to ATM, online shopping, microwaves, GPS, cell phones and all those wonderful modern things which are supposed to make our life easier and leave us more time for ourselves.  
 
Yet, I remember my mother sitting in the living room late at night with the big headphones on, listening to music.
 
Maybe because people bought music... If you buy an album on a very limited budget, maybe you tend to give it the time and try to enjoy it. When there's a gazillion songs available a single click away, for free, you may not be as inclined to put time into it.
 
People nowadays don't have the same relation with music because they just don't put anything into it - neither money, neither time, neither he attention. Who sits quietly in front of the speakers to listen to music with no source of distraction but the album sleeve?
 
Hence, it's all meaningless.
 
 

 
I still enjoy the whole 'ritual' of unpacking and playing a new album - I even read the sleeve notes
 
Having said that, cracking open a CD case and putting the disc in my PC doesn't seem to hold the same 'excitement' as carefully inspecting an LP, laying it on the turntable and making sure the stylus was clean.
 
There are a couple of major differences between then and now, one beneficial, the other not so much. Generally speaking, I still buy CDs on personal preference and on recommendations from others, but the advantage now is that one can usually listen to an album's tracks online before deciding on whether or not to buy it.
 
On the down side, I think the change from LPs to CDs has to some extent (and maybe paradoxically) led to a decrease in the popularity of the album format - specifically, that a CD can hold about twice as much music as an LP. This might tie in with the limited attention span/other competing entertainment theory, in as much as it always seemed just about the 'right' length of time to listen to 20 minutes of music, then punctuate the experience by having to get up and flip the record over for the other 20 minutes. A lot of bands nowadays seem to believe they have to fill up virtually all of the 80 minutes available on a CD. This might mean we get a lot of 'filler' tracks, or maybe that bands only release a CD album half as frequently that they might have once released an LP.
 
One thing for sure is that the 80 minute CD format is cool for reissues/remasters of older albums when the record company uses the extra capacity over the original LP for example to add in tracks that were only ever released as singles.
 
I often wonder how many others there are out there like me who don't much care for buying music in mp3 format? I would certainly buy a lot more music if it was available to download at equivalent to CD/wave quality. Surely these days, with relatively cheap storage drives and rapid download speeds, there is a case to be made for offering 16/44.1 (or higher) quality downloads as an alternative to mp3? I'm guessing that the powers-that-be must have done their market research on this possibility, but I'd imagine that those of us who would buy better quality downloads if they were available must be dwarfed into insignificance against the mp3/iTunes generation.