Music

I almost exclusively listen to full albums front to back, maybe skipping a few songs. Is anyone else like this?

Builder of software and songs. 

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/cameron for content experiments. Helping Creators with /seemore. Yapping on /okbanger. Curating in /creators. Dev + Veteran + HBS. 
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What proof is there of this? Albums are very much alive, but there is more experimentation going on I’d say

very very hard to find data to "prove" it since streaming has obviously eaten the music world over the past decade and sites don't like sharing granular album level data, but structurally i tend to combine 2 things:

- what are the incentives driving?
- what are people doing?

TikTok/short form video is the main incentive driver for distribution and that's why artists are generally optimizing for hooks (even over singles a lot of the time). If a hook hits, then you can write the song after. It hurts my heart to think about it, but its the "optimal" way to produce music from a business efficiency lens 😩

How are people listening?

Well, since it's through streaming platforms, it's pretty obvious how bc the platforms push playlists and new singles.

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I believe TikTok and streaming are both significant factors here. Artists aren't compensated for full album listens. The formula is 1,500 on-demand audio and/or video streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale. The biggest shift I've noticed is that artists are creating shorter songs and longer or double albums to increase the number of plays. Playlists also play a big role in this shift. I think we both agree that the definition of an album has evolved. Getting a traditional "album album" from artists is becoming increasingly rare