Year Six of the second iteration of the New Music Seminar brought an essential mix of industry sluggers and wannabees to the New Yorker Hotel amidst a heavy downpour as attendees filled the garment district’s notoriously lousy restaurants (White Castle, anyone?) during breaks.
But the real action was inside the three ballrooms as the organizers of this year’s event pulled out the stops to attract plenty of sound bite-worthy panelists. BestNewBands.com attended the lively “Great Debate: Singles vs Albums” moderated by Billboard’s quick-witted Editorial Director Bill Werde (“I’m in the role of Gwen Ifill”).
The 75-minute session began with prepared speeches from the four participants. Robert Christgau, the long-time Village Voice Music Editor and so-called Dean of American Rock Critics (13,000 reviews and counting!), offered a primer of how record labels discovered during the Sgt. Pepper’s era that 89-cent singles could be outshined by $4+ album sales to fuel profits. “Anyone who thinks the album should be extinct is too easily bored,” offered Christgau, who bemoaned that people no longer want to have “enduring relationships with artists.”
He was challenged by former Yahoo and MTV exec, Jay Frank, who argued that people have too many choices and too short attention spans and thus don’t have time to embrace a whole album. He recommended that artists that want a “deeper connection to their audiences” should release “more singles, more often. As a developing artist, immediate feedback is key.”
One audience member of the packed ballroom asked if releasing an ep might be a compromise solution. Niles Hollowell-Dhar of the band Cataracs noted that ultimately “it’s in the number of people you can reach” and warned the developing artists in the room: “don’t think of it like ‘only albums have intensity’.” When pro-album panelist Anand Wilder of Yeasayer offered: “The debate is essentially art versus hyper-capitalism,” pro-singles participants Hollowell-Dhar and Frank shouted simultaneously, as if on cue, “No it’s not!”
Frank continued: “15 years ago, the majority of sales revenues were from plastic discs. Now there’s a very diversified revenue stream” such as Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and so on.
When Werde asked the two sides for closing remarks, Frank said “singles are how people consume music. Focus on making it tight.” Not surprisingly, Christgau countered: “Work within the commercial restraints and then expand them. You want to make your audience better.” For better or for worse, when Werde asked the audience which side had won the debate, the pro-singles team was the clear winner.
