Music

Kinda interesting how the amount of filler in an album has fluctuated due to discovery and distribution dynamics over time.

Singles used to be the teaser to sell an entire album. A good music store would allow you sample a record before buying it. It’s a fun ritual that still exists at vinyl stores.

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For older albums the hits would tend to cluster towards the middle. If you drop the needle you’re likely to land in the middle of the record. Post CD albums tend to be front-loaded. You want to hook people in from track 1.

Arguably the concept of an album was challenged maximally with the iTunes Store.

This came in the form of double albums that ran up to 40 tracks. Just a pile of a crap with a rare gem. If you’re a shameless big artist, enough fans will listen to the whole thing out of sheer curiosity. Stream counts go through the roof. You’re incentivized to ship a vastly worse product.

The unbundling of the album meant that there was much less incentive to create filler or even to create an album at all compared to churning out singles.

People would be choosy about which tracks they wanted to pay a dollar for.

Then streaming meant unlimited paid discovery. Filler came back with a vengeance.