Are double albums still relevant in 2023?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Please excuse the Elektronauts running-joke title format. :smile:

I do mean the question seriously, though. I’m preparing to release my first album in almost five years, and I have enough material I’d consider album-worthy this time around that I’ve been imagining it as a double album. The thing is, albums aren’t exactly what they used to be… perhaps double albums doubly so.

I’ve had an appreciation for a good album structure ever since the first CD I bought. The way things flow from an opener to a second track, through the arc of the middle tracks, to the closing track is something I really pay attention to both as a listener and a (bedroom) producer.

M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming in 2011 made me appreciate how a double album can extend that logic across two parts of a whole. I’ve been trying to find that structure in my next album, but I realized something important: the double album seems to have disappeared.

I mean literally: in a world of streaming, the user interfaces for major streaming services seem to have forgotten the concept. Pull up something like the aforementioned M83 release on Spotify on your phone, and it’s just a list of 22 tracks (interestingly, the desktop app still separates the discs). I’m not aware of any digital distribution services that support double album metadata. My distributor of choice, Soundrop, suggested just doing Volume I and Volume II releases.

So… what should I do? A big 20+ track single album, which is what all the classic double albums seem to have become on streaming anyway? Volume I & II? Silent track in the middle to simulate swapping discs?

One thing I’ve considered recently is an intermezzo track. Something to break up the album at the halfway mark, maybe a stylistic departure from the rest of the album.

Anyway, if you’ve made it to the end of this unexpectedly long post, thank you for your patience, and I’m curious what you think!

#2

I buy lots on vinyl again these days, and I have a renewed appreciation for double album. I say do it! And release it on vinyl so I can buy it.

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#3

You’ll get more attention by separating it onto 4 ep, sadly that’s the way music is consumed now. But yeah , just a random opinion, not a rule.

#4

It seems to me that a double album is an artifact of the 12" vinyl format, just as some of James Brown’s most iconic tracks came in “(Part 1)” and “(Part 2)” pieces to fit on the two sides of a 7" single. Even some of the greatest double albums can feel a bit padded. (A notable exception is Stevie Wonder’s “Songs In The Key Of Life”, which was two 12" discs plus a 7" 33 1/3 rpm EP, and I don’t think I want to give up any of it.) Some groups tried to design concepts around the four sides of a double album; I’m not sure any of these were very successful. When CDs came along, suddenly the standard was 74 to 80 minutes. A former single album (40-ish minutes) then seemed stingy, while a former double wouldn’t fit (I remember being annoyed at tracks being dropped on some reissues).

Now even I (who does not stream) don’t often listen to a whole album at a sitting (though I had some long commutes in the fall and that was a perfect thing to do). Playlists and channels are the order of the day. From your original post, it feels as if you didn’t conceive this as a double album, and in fact you haven’t found the necessary structure. I think if you manage to do so, some of your listeners will appreciate it, but many won’t, and you might have to let the listener know through whatever notes or information mechanisms are available for a particular mode of distribution. If you don’t manage, you have the freedom to release as many of the tracks as you care to, in whatever order you want.

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#5

It could be either a double LP or a +6 hours album à la Caretaker.

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#6

If you aren’t maxing out the FAT32 filesystem, are you even trying?

http://www.comatonse.com/releases/soulnessless/

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#7

This is… something. I can’t not attempt to listen!

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#8

As I written elsewhere, the old dusty 12’’ format has quite good attention span, very good limit for an album. 2xLP is also a good format, but also requires 3 changes of sides… :slight_smile:

#9

I suppose that is a useful distinction… it’s true I wasn’t initially approaching this in concept as a double album, but the more I started to nail down the tracks, the more it seemed like they could fit the structure. But so far that structure is basically just two of how I would normally put an album together. That said, the M83 double I like so much is kind of two of his typical arcs welded together, so maybe it’s not that bad.

This is a good point in favor of multiple releases. I don’t think I’d do more than two for this project, but two would be better than one for the algorithm! :sweat_smile:

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#10

Yes. Double albums will be the new craze like cassettes and vinyl. Trust me.

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#11

Double albums have lost focus as a viable release format.

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#12

For me, the more tracks the better. I wanna hear it all.

#13

Ponder shortly of what you would prefer as a listener on any service and think no more on the subject.

You can’t agonize up a solution to what doesn’t currently exist, all you can do is move on.

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#14

The smash just did a triple album or a 3-act album:

it’s one album but the track count restart for each album/act and they are released at different time (weird though but it’s to keep the promotional flow going I guess)

so do what will support your vision the best.

#15

royksopp recently released a three parts album as well, three full albums as one, Profound Mysteries I-II-III

their previous album named The Inevitable End was thought to be their last album, but later they’ve clarified that they felt that single album is not working for them as a format and that they need something else and eventually released this triple beast of an album…

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#16

albums stopped be relevant since 90s, when CD became the default format.
average LP is around 45 minutes.
CD has 80 minutes and tempts to use them all.
the result was typically extra 35 minutes of filler making the whole thing too hard to listen.

well, there were some exceptions (e.g. classic goa trance albums, typically 8- or 9-track), but exceptions never overweight the trend.

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#17

A terabyte drive can hold about 250,000 MP3 files. (At 4 minutes per song, that’s a million minutes of music, or 16,666 hours, or 694 days, or almost two whole years of uninterrupted listening pleasure.)

I’m attempting to make my next album a 1 TB release.

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#18

I think you should do what you want to artistically. If it feels like a double album, it probably is. I don’t think “having it on Spotify as 40 tracks” is going to prevent it being a success (on whatever terms you consider it will be) if it’s going to be succesful really.

What you could do to avoid the issue that less people listen to albums is probably release about 35-50% of the tracks as singles first, month by month to build up a bit of attention/familiarity with the name/buzz.

Then drop it as a full album at the end.

Unless you’re Rihanna/Beyonce/Sheeran/Eilish, in which case drop it as a surpise release acompanied by a 2 hour concept film to avoid piracy.

But probably the first thing.

Also, you can either make it a “double album” on streaming services by having two album records and the same title with a subtitle OR one album and make all the tracks like “ALBUM NAME A - cool track” and “ALBUM NAME B - Another cool track” right? It’s just finding a way to represent the fact that it’s a double hander thing.

#19

Double vinyl album is for sure as relevant as ever, due to physical constraints of vinyl it is necessary if you have an album that won’t fit on a single disk.

A digital double album though seems more like a marketing gimmick, because there are no file size constraints.

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#20

The album will always remain relevant, as will the double album.

This is because while digital formats come and go, vinyl is here to stay. This in turn guarantees the importance and relevance of the album as well as the thought process that goes into arranging an album in a particular way.

The cool thing about vinyl is that it cannot be controlled by big tech or even the government. It’s not beyond the scope of even reasonably adept individuals, to build themselves a record cutting machine if they were ever pushed to be really rebellious about it. For that reason, you are therefore guaranteed that vinyl and the format of the album (and double album) is eternally safe, and musicians should always aim to ensure that their releases are vinyl album-format friendly.

Always remember: A vinyl album is digital friendly, but a digital album is not always vinyl friendly.

The solution therefore is a no-brainer: The wise will always release in vinyl-friendly album format.