Last Year in music

So I was thinking that a ton of good music was made this past year. I did a little research and found that while quite a few of my favorite artists put new records out - it wasn't as many as I had originally thought.

Here's a list of some of the albums that were released this year by some of my favorite artists in no particular order.

The Killers - Day and Age: I did not like Human at all the first few times I heard it, but then I saw their performance of that song on some MTV award show and was blown away. After that I bought the record and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Their songs are interesting and fun to listen to.

Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns: I really enjoy listening to this album, but it's not as good as their previous two offerings. For me, SP doesn't get any better than Final Straw.

Keane - Perfect Symmetry: Most of the songs on this record are a total departure from typical Keane. Which is cool - they did it without losing their identity. Oh, and the song Better than This... David Bowie called, he wants his sound back.

Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends: It's a terrible album title, but who really cares. This was probably my most anticipated album this year. I downloaded it one morning, got on a plane and listened to it for the whole flight. For that reason I now associate it with Zuma (a really fun iPod game). It delivers the goods. I'm glad my first impression of this record was NOT their most recent SNL appearance - Chris Martin was so creepy and so over-excited.

Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs: This was my second most anticipated album of the year. I don't love their first single from the album, I will Possess Your Heart. I'm not sure how they pick a single and I'm not sure there is another "radio" single on that record, but I haven't learned about new music on the radio since... I can't remember. I do like this album, but it is not Plans and that's okay.

R.E.M. - Accellerate: This was totally unexpected to me. I used to be a huge R.E.M. fan, GREEN was my first cassette (Not sure why it needs ALL CAPS). I stopped being fan sometime after Monster mostly because it seems like Michael Stipe wasn't singing with the passion and feeling that I was accustumed to (Eddie Vedder lost me for the same reasons after Vitology). He's back. He's singing and screaming. They sound like a cross between Monster and Life's Rich Pageant. It's a good thing.

Death of the Album?

Back before I was alive music was delivered to the masses on things called records or 45's. As I've been told, they had a song on each side - the B-side was usually a throw-away song to fill the back side of a single they though would sell. I'm not sure when LP's came into the mix. That's when the record got larger and more songs were put onto each side - hence an album. Then came 8-tracks then cassettes, then CD's. Each of these formats had the ability to record approximately the same amount of music on them - hence the length of an album a band put out stayed fairly constant.

I'm sure there are still people who purchase their music on some form of physical medium such as CD, SCAD or some other audiophile snob format that I'm unaware of, but most people I know download their music strait to their computer via iTunes, file-sharing or my personal favorite Amazon. (I need to do a blog on DRM, bit rates, and all of that stuff soon.) Bands are no longer limited by or obligated to provide an offering of a traditional length when putting out new music. So why do they still do it? Would the public buy music that "trickled" in from an artist one song at a time? or do we still want our music in chunks? I suppose the artists is limited by the size of a CD as long as they are still issuing music on that format. Perhaps the economics of getting the band together in a studio for a reasonable amount of time automatically generates enough music to fill a traditional album. Not too sure. Perhaps it's just giving people what they want/expect.

I don't like the term "album" when referring to a traditional band offering - sounds synonymous with vinyl. I like the term "record", but that suffers from the same problem. I feel a little silly using the term "CD" when the music I'm referring to never saw the surface of a CD. What is the generic term for a group of songs by a particular artist or group of artist designed for simultaneous release? Thoughts?