Something I said on ILM yesterday.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Which nobody addressed - the thread was moving fast and this was a tangent.

I can think of two long-term marketing triumphs for the record industry. The former possibly accidental (but probably not), the latter definitely on purpose. First is the promotion of the album as a format and the repackaging of popular music as non-disposable. Second (linked to the first) is the promotion and success of the CD format as a way to buy old music as well as new.

It's the level of accident I'm interested in really. The move to album format, the move away from disposability - when did these happen (I know that in the UK 1969 was the year album sales overtook single sales), and how proactive or reactive were the record labels in this?

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

In retrospect it was probably a mistake to post this when 2 of the 3 Poptimists who might have most perspective on it are away at EMP!

[koganbot]

It was a buildup from several years earlier, but the payoff year was 1968, when Cream's Disraeli Gears was the best-selling album in the U.S. As for proactive the record labels were, I have no idea, nor do I know who "the record labels" consisted of, but my guess is that starting in 1964 not only were there a swarm of rock bands with a new business model that gave the bands more creative control than performers had had previously (and more say in business decisions) but also a swarm of new people working for the record companies, and these people passionately believed in the social and artistic value of what the rock bands were doing. So the idea of the music's social and artistic value would lead naturally to valuing every song on an album and even promoting an album as a unified aesthetic statement. I don't have specific information to back up these assertions, but they do ring true to me, that the social and the aesthetic decisions had a commercial payoff in the successful selling of a more expensive format, rather than people thinking "How can we get people to buy the more expensive format?"

[(Anonymous)]

I'm really glad you brought all this up on that thread, btw. I was interested in knowing (aside from your specific points) Poptimist positions on the corporate structures of the record industry, the nuts and bolts of how this stuff gets sold (e.g. media monopolies, how albums are distributed -- not just "marketed" -- and the corporate wheelings and dealings that dictate how music is sold).

My sense is that people following chart and major label stuff are actually MORE in tune with how labels work (though maybe not in the time period you're describing; my sense is that corporate entities behind the labels themselves were far more scattered during the rise of the album both aesthetically and commercially, and therefore it's harder to pinpoint "general trends" since if something worked for one label or company, it might or might not catch on...whereas now, as goes one conglom -- e.g. SUE THE SHIT OUTTA YOUTUBE -- so go the other four).

It's easier for me to follow, say, Hollywood filmmaking practices in this institutional sorta regard, because (1) I've studied it more, (2) it's far more massive and transparent (and awful) than the record industry and (3) the end product is so much more expensive (and not just the production -- marketing and production costs on multi-mil Hollywood films are about equal) that there's not much room for "accidents" (e.g. you're not going to hand someone 100 mil and say "go nuts, be creative!" but "go nuts" seems to happen fairly often in major label music world -- so execs aren't as invested in content-controlled "sure things" in music than they are in film)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(woops, that was me)

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

You get it sometimes, EG $35 million for the new TMNT film by a guy who's never written or directed a film before. But I agree in general, yes.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, in that case they have a reliable franchise ("sure thing") where they know they're making the vast majority of their money back on merchandising and cross-promotion (which is true for most films, actually, but "merchandising" is really DVD sales, cable deals, etc.). I'm thinking more of auteur-types, a Scorcese or Tarantino, or more recently maybe a Cuaron or Innaritu, who have a kind of artistic freedom + huge budget that other directors don't have. (And within this sort of mini-model, you'll get interesting anomalies like a Darren Aranofsky, but then after his last one who knows how he's going to get funding like that again...Terry Gilliam being the poster child for getting totally screwed/jerked around as an "auteur")

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

My hunch is that the triumph of the alBUM as the premier format happened earlier than the move away from disposability.

There are many, many, many more long-forgotten LPs from the 60s and 70s than it's possible for the mind to comfortably accommodate. Tens of thousands of the buggers.

Key moments in repackaging for better or for worse might have happened in the mid-70s, viz:

- release of Beatles' 'red' and 'blue' comps (1973)

- the first greatest hits sets by Elton John (1974) and The Eagles (1976) becoming huge sellers, both sets far outstripping the sales of any of these two acts' previous LPs.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Erm, my point here is:

- pre-76, 'level of accident' = quite high
- 1976 onwards, 'level of accident' = considerably less, I think

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, the album's been around, and selling, for ages. Album as a unitary work - Sinatra's reprise records did really well didn't they? And musical soundtracks - which are unitary works if anything is! - dominate the early 60s chart.

So the social/artistic brainiacs Frank is talking about pick up on the format and decide to start using it and filling it properly.

And then the record labels cement the deal with compilations etc.

But the shift to non-disposability MUST be happening earlier, because as Frank says the album is a more expensive format - there's got to be a commitment to spending more disposable income on music for it to spread from the (presumably older) Sinatra and musicals buyers.

Non-disposability is a really fascinating issue for me - at what point did "It Will Stand" stop being rhetoric and start being reality - I'm sure I've read interviews with most of the big 60s players where they've said, yeah, we assumed it would be 3 years at the top and that was that.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

What about the jazzers in the 50s? e.g. Kind of Blue? Didn't generally release singles, so it was LP as complete artistic statement, whether live or studio.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Not sure affordability of product and non-disposability of content are linked to any great extent.

See also Frank's post at 4:59 below, which I agree with.

[koganbot]

I have a list of Cashbox magazines from 1960 on in front of me, and the best-selling album of every year was a soundtrack album from 1960 to 1967, with one exception (Meet The Beatles in 1964). In fact, the Broadway cast of Sound Of Music is number one in 1960 and number five in 1961, then the film soundtrack of Sound Of Music was number one in 1966 and number two in 1967.

Top five 1967: Dr. Zhivago soundtrack; Sound of Music soundtrack; A Man And A Woman soundtrack; More Of the Monkees; Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Beatles.

Top five 1968: Disraeli Gears - Cream; The Graduate soundtrack (but for all practical purposes this is a Simon & Garfunkel album); Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix Experience; Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel; Look Around - Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66.

But those top fives don't show the extent of the sea change. With very few exceptions, the top of the album sales lists were soundtracks and comedy albums and folk albums and easy listening/adult pop (e.g., Garland, Streisand, Sinatra, Bennett). Whereas in 1968, easy listening is still holding on a bit (Sergio Mendes, Herb Alpert, and Paul Mauriat in the top ten), Simon & Garfunkel have folk tendencies but are basically a rock act, and what this really means is that rock has swallowed the younger end of the folk audience; and not counting the Graduate as a soundtrack (and fundamentally you shouldn't, though it does get some of the adult buyers of soundtracks), no soundtrack is in the top ten. I don't have sales figures, but my assumption is that they are jumping way higher in 1968.

If you're interested, rock 'n' roll/rock/youth pop acts to make the top ten prior to 1968 (I'm not counting easy listening as a "pop" act, which I know is somewhat arbitrary, and also I'm specifying "youth" pop in order to eliminate Johnny Mathis and Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, which is also somewhat arbitrary; and not calling folk acts like the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul & Mary "pop" is also somewhat wrong; but the basic thing is that the "youth" market is mostly singles until 1967 or so, whereas the stuff that's selling on the album lists has significant adult appeal and I'm assuming isn't selling in the quantities that singles are, though I don't have figures to back this up):

1960: The Platters, Elvis
1961: Elvis, The Platters (top ten also contains someone named Rusty Warren, whom I know nothing about)
1962: Elvis, Ray Charles, Joey Dee
1963: Elvis
1964: The Beatles, The Kingsmen (!!) (and going down the chart from here, the only non-Beatles youth rock/pop acts in the top 40 are the Beach Boys, the Dave Clark Five, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles (which is really adult), Elvis)
1965: The Supremes, The Beatles, The Beach Boys
1966: Herman's Hermits, Animals (these were both best-ofs)
1967: Monkees, Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Monkees, Monkees, Doors (so here the shift is already taking place; top three albs being soundtracks but after that Herb Alpert is the only representative of the adult market)
1968: Cream, Graduate (S&G), Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Beatles

[koganbot]

I have a list of Cashbox magazines from 1960 on in front of me

I mean, I have Cashbox magazine's list of top 40 top-selling albums for each year from 1960 to 1968.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

What's !! about the Kingsmen? Louie Louie is a bonafide classic.

[koganbot]

That the album sold big when its prime audience wasn't generally buying albums and the band only had one hit and one half-hit ("Money") to build on.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I'm extremely struck by the info that More Of The Monkees outsold Sgt Pepper's in 1967 - and pleased, since it reflects my tastes much more.

[koganbot]

Ironically, the Beatles album that sounds most unified thematically and emotionally to me is a U.S.-only release from 1964 that was called The Beatles' Second Album, and appropriately enough was their third album. Was the second on Capitol, though, EMI's U.S. subsidiary having - unbelievably - passed on the actual first Beatles album (called Please Please Me in Britain, released in truncated form as Introducing The Beatles on Vee Jay, an indie r&b label). The Beatles' Second Album was a hodge-podge containing an older single that Capitol had also passed on ("She Loves You," which had been licensed to Swan, another indie r&b label), plus some leftovers that hadn't gotten on the American version of the next album ('cause American albums were shorter than British albums until about 1966, don't ask me why), plus a few from the British follow-up, and containing a disproportionate number of cover songs (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Smokey & the Miracles, Barrett Strong/The Kingsmen, the Marvelettes); the reason it sounds so unified is that it's dark, not just in the sense that it's very r&b, but also in the song choice and the performances, "You Really Got A Hold On Me" being raw pain, even more so than the Smokey original, and "Money" being raw pain as well, completely negating the humor and exuberance of the Kingsmen and Barrett Strong versions. "Devil In Her Heart" and "You Can't Do That" (and even the verses of "She Loves You" - "You said you hurt her so, she almost lost her mind"!) fitting right in, "You treat me badly, I love you madly" running logically into "She's got the devil in her heart (no! this I can't believe)" to "The best things in life are free/But you can give 'em to the birds and bees" to "But if it's seen, you talkin' that way, they'd laugh in my face." All this on an album that I assume was thrown together almost at random by the record company.

[koganbot]

Also, this album is my hands-down favorite Beatles album.

[koganbot]

I'm not sure that singles = disposability, albums = longevity, at least not simply. The single was the only real format until the longplayer was introduced in about 1953 ("albums" before them were a physical set of individual singles on multiple pieces of vinyl packaged together like a photo album, hence the name "album"). So emphasizing the single after that for a while just means going on with business as usual. Are soundtrack albums meant to last or meant as souvenirs and remembrances? And easy listening being on LP makes sense not because you want to keep the album eternally but because you put on easy listening in order to chill out while it plays in the background. And kids buying singles aren't necessarily assuming they'll toss 'em in a few years, but rather are making a decision about what they can afford.

Which doesn't mean you're wrong to link the commercial triumph of album to a sense of supposed permanent value, but rather, this isn't necessarily built into the album from the get-go.

By the way, in the '80s and '90s in the U.S. the record companies had an odd attitued towards the single, trying to get some consumers to buy at first and then have everyone else jump to the album once the single was made unavailable. This didn't quite go for the 12-inch single, which was something of a different animal and was often on hip-hop and dance indies. But I remember in the late '80s reading an analysis that showed that if you combined regular and 12-inch single sales, single sales were actually rising for a time (though not nearly to the extent that album sales were). My impression - again I haven't done the research - is that the record companies really wished they could do away with the single altogether, but consumer demand remained.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

This is more instinct than fact, but I also wanted to toss this in (following on Frank's comment above): remember that the Beatles US and UK releases were different up until 1966 or so, surely the moment when they and their label got together and said "Hey, this is not just about whatever 10-14 songs we can squeeze onto 12 inches of vinyl, but rather THESE 10-14 songs..." Part of that is artistic intent, obviously, but it also means you have to conceptualize the album itself as a product and not just bonus tracks added to a single.