A Good Album is More than Just a Collection of Singles
Some people find it hard to understand my man Jay-Z's decision not to let iTunes break up his American Gangster album and sell it as single tracks. They say he's fighting the future and losing out on sales from fans who only want to download singles. But I say it was a stand somebody had to take in the music industry. Jay is speaking for all of us.
He's not the first. He's not the lone cowboy in all of this. Radiohead and AC/DC have turned their backs on iTunes for the same reason. Doug Morris, the CEO of Universal Group, has been fighting Steve Jobs on this for a minute now. But Jay is at a level people are going to pay attention to. He's had 10 number one albums. He may run Def Jam but he's also an artist who put his heart and soul into something that he wants people to hear all the way through. As the creator and investor, he has every right to demand this.
Not only that, I believe he's starting a movement that's necessary. More artists and producers are gonna take back control of how their art is sold because his strategy has paid off. Maybe Hova coulda sold another 100,000 to 200,000 units by playing it iTunes' way, but he still had the number one album last week. He STILL sold 425,000 units. Even more, he's proven you can still sell an album without those guys.
Jay made everyone realize that iTunes taking what we give them and doing what they want with it isn't the way it has to be. He put the light on and made other people realize, "Oh these guys are just selling our music, they ain't making it." If anything, WE made iTunes. It's like how we spent $300,000 to $500,000 each on our videos and MTV and BET went ahead and built an entire video television industry off of our backs. We can't let that happen again. These businesses exist solely because of our music. So if we as artists, producers and label executives stand up, those guys at Apple can either cooperate, or have nothing for people to buy and download on their iPods.
Apple thinks that's never gonna happen. They think that we as the record industry will never stick together. But Universal sells one out of every three records. All it'll take is for Warner Music to say, "You know what, I'm with you," for us to shut 'em down. No more iPods! They won't have nothin' to play on their players! We can take back the power if we're willing to sacrifice some sales to make our point.
These days people just assume that you need a number one single to have a number one album. But look at what's really happening. Soulja Boy sold almost 4 million singles and only 300,000 albums! We let the consumer have too much of what they want, too soon, and we hurt ourselves. Back in the day when people were excited about a record coming out we'd put out a single to get the ball going and if we sold a lot of singles that was an indication we'd sell a lot of albums. But we'd cut the single off a few weeks before the album came out to get people to wait and let the excitement build. When I put out Kris Kross we did that. We sold two million singles, then we stopped. Eventually we sold eight million albums!
Did consumers complain? Maybe so. But at what point does any business care when a consumer complains about the money? Why do people not care how we - the people who make music - eat? If they just want the single, they gotta get the album. That was how life was. Today we should at least have that option. Yeah, it's about the money, but it's also about quality. Creating each album as a body of work that means something gives the consumer something better to listen to, It's that simple. Otherwise all anyone would care about is making a bunch of ringtones.
A good album is more than just a collection of singles. American Gangster was a story with a beginning, middle and end. I came in at the end and did the last song, "Fallin'." But every joint was related. Each song gets better from listening to the one next to it, and the one after that. I didn't just sit by myself in my studio in Atlanta, crank somethin' out, and throw it in the pot.
That album was the product of the best minds in hip hop today: Jay, Puffy, the Neptunes, No I.D., Just Blaze and me. We all came together and threw ideas around. Me and Jay had long conversations about our favorite mafia movies, and that moment in all those gangsta stories - Scarface, The Godfather -- when the hero makes his big mistake and falls. We came in with respect for each others' craft so the whole album could do right by the story. We made quality music for our consumers. We made art.
None of this is new. Every record is in some way a concept album. The whole always strives to be better than its parts. I dedicate a whole chapter in my book to this process. Every thing I produce is a product of me spending time with the artist and getting to know where his or her head is at. Usher's Confessions album was all about where he was at that point in his life. Same with Mariah's Emancipation of Mimi.
Even if I'm not executive producing and I'm brought in at the end on someone else's album, I listen to what everyone else has done and try to make my tracks fit. I'm like an interior decorator who comes into a house and fixes up one room. It doesn't look like every other room, but at least it picks up some threads so that room looks like it belongs in the same home. Every album is created for you to hear the next song, especially on rap albums. Rappers make intros on their records for a reason- they want you to listen it to set the mood and get ready for that second song.
I'm not saying that music can't ever be sold as singles. Not every album is equal and consumers are always going to try to cherry pick the songs they like. But that doesn't mean the people who investing their time, money and sweat into a record shouldn't have the right to decide how it's gonna be sold, whether that's in single units or as a whole. My book, Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul, came out in hardcover last month, but Simon & Schuster doesn't let the book stores tear it up and sell it chapter by chapter. A record is no different.
Asking us to let other people mess with all our hard work like that is disrespectful. It's like when you go an art auction, and an Andy Warhol painting is up for sale at $5 million, but a buyer is allowed to just by off the top right hand corner of the canvas for a hundred thou'
Apple, why are you helping the consumer destroy our canvas? We don't tell you to break up your computers into bits and pieces and sell off each thing. When you go to the Apple store you may only need one thing, but you have to buy all their plug ins and stuff. You have to buy their whole package, even if you don't necessarily want it, or your equipment won't work. We're just saying, if you have the audacity to sell your products like that, don't treat our products as something less than yours.
Respect the craft!
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Jermaine Dupri, who was named the most successful R&B producer of all time by the Guinness World Records 2007, is a Grammy-award winning music producer, president of Island Urban Records and author of Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul (Atria, October 2007). For more information about this blogger, click here.
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I prefer a good album to a good single.
I prefer a good single to a shitty album with a couple of good singles.
Anything you want to do to stop me from obtaining my preference is your right, but if you do it too much, I will stop trusting you and stop buying your music.
I prefer to remunerate the artist/producer for his/her efforts to put out good music. If the artist/producer screws me, I am not above screwing him back.
I am one of many.
This equation will help you understand why you can't abuse the consumer's choice and expect good results.
You get paid millions because millions are interested in buying your record. You abuse those millions, fewer and fewer are interested in your record. End of story.
Dupri forgets that Apple's iTunes store could not sell individual songs -- or any songs, for that matter -- if the labels, including the one he works for, did not make their recordings available in the first place. So, it is the height of hypocracy to accuse iTunes of "doing what they want" with the music. Presumably all the labels have contracts with Apple that allow them to do so, as well as clauses that allow the label or the artist to specify when a given album can only be sold as a whole and not be made available as individual tracks.
Then Mr. Dupri falls into the standard record-industry trap of blaming the consumer for its troubles. Perhaps if the labels spent more time on artist development (rather than trying to give us more of the flavor of the moment, or reissuing back catalog for the fifth or sixth time because they couldn't get it right the first four or five times), made a sincere effort to improve sound quality, charged more reasonable prices for their releases, and stopped treating their customers as if they were all thieves who would rather steal the music than actually shell out for a copy of something, people might start returning to the record shops.
Ladies and Gentlemen, "Exhibit A" in why the music industry is losing customers.
The record industry should have stuck with vinyl, perhaps looking for a way to improve it rather than go whole-hog into CDs as if nobody would ever be able to possess the means to duplicate/rip them for pennies a track in a few seconds per minute of audio. With vinyl, you have to record in real time, which slows the whole file-sharing business down, if only a little bit. Besides, an MP3 transcribed from vinyl is as unique and identifiable as a fingerprint, and is thus traceable to its source. Thus, you wouldn't have to sue your own fans, just the scumbags who produce the bootlegs and make them available.
Everybody would be happy. I get to make all the CDs I want to play in my car, or all the MP3s I want to listen to on my MP3 player, but if I don't want to hear from the RIAA, I make sure I stay on the happy side of fair use.
A well-written defense of artistic integrity, certainly, but the concept of the Greatest Hits album sort of negates the argument. And while AC/DC is perfectly within their rights to publish their music in whatever way they choose, the fact that their albums often contain previously published songs (I think I found "The Jack" on at least three) makes the case for singles that much stronger.
"No more iPods! They won't have nothin' to play on their players!"
Are ipods designed such that the only way to put music on them is to buy an mp3 through itunes?
My mp3 player lets me copy mp3s from my hard drive. MP3s which I rip from cds I buy, so that I don't have to deal with DRM crap. And when cds I buy have that anticonsumer technology, I stop supporting the artist.
Great post with lots to think about.
I've always loved the album as an art form and have recently been lamenting its demise. So many of our greatest artists worked best in the album format--Sinatra, the Who, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder come immediately to mind. (As opposed to "singles artists" like Elvis, Chuck Berry, or most of the great Motown acts.) I don't know if "Tommy" or "Songs in the Key of Life" or "Sexual Healing" or Sinatra masterpieces of the '50s-'60s like "No One Cares" would have made the cultural impact they did if they had been chopped up into individual tracks and sold ala carte.
On the other hand, even during the golden age of the album, there was always room for both albums and singles. The Beatles taught the record industry how to use singles to promote albums and vice versa, and the artists who followed the Beatles business plan profited greatly by it--if they had a legitimately good album, that is.
And, Dupri, I hadn't thought about buying the soundtrack before reading your post, but now I think I will. You're bringing back the album one listener at a time.
Great Post, JD. I agree that an album should be a fluid work that makes a consumer WANT to purchase the whole thing. But the majority of albums stink. You and a bunch of the producers and artists you've named made good ones, but you're lumping the D4Ls and Soulja Boys in with artists that I admire and respect. I bought American Gangster, but I wouldn't buy SouljaBoyT
You also seem to be forgetting the history of you're own business. Back in the days of early Rock N Roll, singles were the coin of the realm, and albums were rare. In those days, major labels were forced to compete with independents for radio dominance, and the landscape was lush with product. The LP was a part of the movement, along with overpayment to independent promoters, to crush independents by creating skrocketing costs, forcing them to shut down or take their artists to the majors so they could continue on making money. The majors vice grip has continued unabated ever since, and the music has become increasingly crappy as a result of zero competition and a stranglehold on the radio. The reason label heads and execs like yourself are scared now is because anyone can sell a CD on itunes, and the internet allows the music to go straight into the hands of the people. Truth be told, Soulja Boy did himself a disservice by signing with you guys. After all, he produced that album entirely on his own, and all you did was took the lion's share of his money.
I wonder if Mr. Dupri is truly as naive as he seems to be in this post. He thinks that if he simply decides to withhold singles releases from iTunes, listeners will obey like sheep and pay full price for the album. For new releases especially, this is the furthest thing from the truth. All he's doing is converting a potential single sale into a P2P file share, where no one gets paid and the listener gets what he wants for free.
The difference between music and books or paintings is that music can be copied exactly and distributed digitally to millions with very little effort. Also, Mr. Dupri is being somewhat disingenuous here. He makes a lot of money from singles, yet he wants to be able to tell us which singles we can buy and which ones we can't.
The days are long past when artists can simply dictate distribution and consumers are forced into either going along or missing out. The public has greater control over how it uses media of all types than ever before. Fact is, once the creation leaves the artist's hands, there isn't much they can do to influence how it's consumed.
As a fellow artist, I can agree and sympathize with your sentiments.
However somewhere down the road we will all be forced to find a compromise between marketability and practicality.
I suggest you research a compromise situation.
There are some great points made above... and it is (without a doubt) a very relevant and important discussion to be having....
There are exceptions of course, as with anything..
So we find ourselves in a Chicken vs. Egg situation.
To expand upon JD's metaphor "the album as the artists' canvas" ..... If I find myself in a museum.... there are paintings that I glance at only briefly, focusing solely upon certain sections because they are lesser works and do not speak to me as a whole.... and then there are others that I stand in front of for long periods of time absorbing every gesture, every brush stroke, every indication of light and shadow... because they are masterwork
If recording artists focused more upon producing those masterworks you would see a marketed rise in album sales as a whole, but as long as the record industry shoots for the lowest common denominator, we as consumers should be afforded the opportunity to voice our displeasure by not having to shell out 20 bucks for an inferior product.
Just like I go to 31 flavors for a scoop of ice cream and the store for a carton, I go to iTunes for a single song and buy the CD if I want the 'Album'.
You seem to be confusing the two.
Conversely, just make a good 'Album', and we'll buy every song.
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Wow. Now that's a courageous post, Mr. Dupri.
While reading your words, I was literally torn in two. One-half of me said "He's just another greedy superstar, taking one for the team--all his greedy record company friends who are too afraid to take a stand," while the other half said "He's right about books not being sold by the chapter... books are a perfect analogy for what he's trying to say."
I also had difficulty deciding which side I'm on, because I not only admire Steve Jobs in several ways, but I also enjoy downloading single tracks--something I couldn't do and lamented many times as a teenager in the I-Pod-less 70's.
I think you have done HuffPost a great service here, by firmly and eloquently stating your views on a topic which may not have an easy, black & white answer. I know that you've made me rethink this issue, and I thank you for that. Perhaps there is room for both business models, because in my opinion it IS ultimately about the art, and letting the artists reach as many people as possible. It can't be just about the money.
I don't think even Steve Jobs, with his $1 dollar salary, would argue with that principle.
Dupri is right to a degree. In reality, albums are more like those paintings where each frame holds its own image as well. While it is important that an album come together into a coherant whole, unless we are dealing with a literal concept album, it is equally valid to appreciate a small portion of the overall tapestry.
Personally, I will never abandon the purchase of full albums because I love the experience of opening a package, taking out a booklet and read lyrics along as the first harmonious ( or disharmonious for the fellow metal lover) riffs of music begin to play....
But that's my choice. Listening to musical singles as a form of utility or entertainment is equally valid. Playing catchy songs as your Ipod shuffles on a road trip is also a special experience. The key is to maximize user choice. For too long, music labels have forced high priced and low quality crap on the consumer and they are now paying with the glut of illegal downloads. Choice and resonable pricing together are the vital components that itunes brings together well. These are the reasons it is successful
Fallin' is the best track on the album, easy.
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