The Album Drought: Why Artists Release Fewer Albums Now

Aspen Rose

Music Journalist

It’s hard not to notice how modern-day artists release far fewer albums today than artists of the 60s–80s. If you’re venturing into a band that had its peak in the 70s, there’s a good chance you’ll be trekking through their mountainous discographies for a while. Though it was common for the artists that serenaded our parents’ generations to put out one to two albums a year, music fans of the 21st century may find themselves feeling lucky when their favorite artists put out that many albums in five years. Consider Arctic Monkeys–they have a solid history of defining the modern rock space through album releases about every two years. If we step back a few decades and consider The Kinks, a key member of the 60s British Invasion, they unveiled new records back-to-back every year, with some years having multiple releases. So, how did this switch ultimately happen? Did bands become lazier or just more quality-driven?

As it turns out, it is a complex journey to navigate through the progressive change spanning decades, so, to answer these questions, it is crucial to explore elements ranging from record labels and marketing to financials and technology. A central catalyst, however, does deserve special attention. The infamous, groundbreaking transformation in music consumption from physical to streaming has clearly dramatically turned the music industry on its head. Here, the mixture of streaming’s unforeseen consequences can be dissected to explain a portion of what contributed to the current album frequency phenomenon.

How does a band stay present as the face of magazines and Rolling Stone articles? By producing whatever media is most popular, artists have a good chance of remaining relevant in such a fast-paced industry. California band, Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) famously rolled out three albums in 1969 alone. However, once albums fell below singles and EPs in the food chain, artists naturally redirected their focus away from releasing what might restrain their visibility (albums). Of course, financial considerations are directly tied to whatever is currently keeping a band popular. Logically, old bands like CCR who earned their revenue from albums pushed out far more records than today’s bands who find it impossible to make a living solely off selling records. Instead, the release of one album every blue moon, now must be milked to generate revenue from a large accompanying tour and merchandise sales. The final tie between the change in music consumption and the change in album output points to record label strategies. As the audience’s gaze fell away from albums, so did the gaze of the industry’s label companies. Traditionally, artists were signed to record labels that focused on requiring a certain amount of album releases in a particular time frame (usually one to two per year). Now that their cut of a band’s profits has widely expanded to streaming and tours, labels have significantly loosened their once extremely strict pressure on record production for their own benefit. This liberation has given way to more freedom of creative decisions for artists with the new lack of album-centered stress. Of course, there are exceptions like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard who, in 2017, fulfilled their promise to summon five studio albums in the year, but, if anything, this only represented the positive impact relaxed requirements have on artists’ creative expression.

Outside of the great shift to streaming and the subsequent effects mentioned, a comprehensive evaluation of past and present decades also requires analyzing the role of technological resources in the recording process. Thanks to tech advances in the space of music creation, modern artists benefit from increasing focus on production with endless resources to tweak and truly perfect their desired sound. Recording in the 60s, in comparison, relied almost entirely on live performance and featured minimal production with the limited technology. The well-rehearsed full-band recording method also reduced the extended post-recording time by largely cutting the need to overdub, prompting a much simpler procedure. Today, the magic of the production process practically makes the studio Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. An artist reaching the mixing and mastering step usually employs instrument and vocal layering, ultra-detailed microscopic editing, sound creation, and much, much more. Though this boundless approach is designed to push artists to engage their full creative potential, the modern-day timeline from recording to releasing is often greatly prolonged, further drawing out the time between album releases. For The Strokes, an evident gap between release years, separating earlier and later works, illustrates the elongating effects of electronic experimentation. Leaving their traditional garage indie rock in the early 2000s, the band truly began bending the genre’s boundaries with their record, First Impressions of Earth (2006), where their exploration with production only progressed onward as did the subsequent delays between future albums.

To complete the intricate portrait of today’s album regularity, a spotlight must be shone on the 80s where albums came into the decade with a humble work ethic and left with billboard singles and a mullet. The power of singles being pulled from records became a surfboard of opportunity for artists to coast on as they surged their way up the charts and, thus, into popular culture. At the tip of the new marketing strategy, record labels who profited from top hits quickly understood that after tracks became hits, artists could tour on their single album release for years while early bands really only toured for one year. So, in the frenzy of singles, the balancing act between promoting, touring, and putting out records eventually left singles on top and records a low-lying priority today. From decade to decade, the music industry faces transformations quicker than humanity can grasp. Who knew the simple question of why current bands release fewer albums could reflect so much change in music culture over the decades? As physical mediums slowly retrace their way back around, maybe artists’ former strategic focus on full-length records will redirect along with it.