ShareThisIt's been a long time since I bought a CD.It's been years since fresh cellophane has found the floor of my car, and ages since I last held liner notes in my hand. I can't remember the last time I gnawed the corner of a jewel case to free that obnoxious sticker. I don't even know if they're still sold that way.Like millions of others, I ripped the last of my store-bought CDs into a portable music player and never listened to my music the same way again. No more homeless CDs in the car cushions. No more music borrowed, never to be seen again. No more albums shared with a blank disc and a Sharpie.No more albums, period.It's been a long time since I listened to an entire album.What began with Napster and exploded with the legitimacy of iTunes has led to a revolution in the way we listen to music. And while the listeners have gained ready access, portability and a 24-hour Chinese buffet of choice, we're slowly but surely losing the album.You don't need a teen-ager in the house to know that record sales are slumping. Sales have been down double digits in the first quarter of 2008. In the past two years, albums have suffered a 25 percent drop. In an age where shuffle is king, no one pays for an entire record when a dollar will buy a song.The album is already an old-fashioned phenomenon meant for those with the free time to stay in one place for just over an hour. Sort of like a newspaper. It's the quaint idea of appreciating not just a song, or a few songs, but several songs recorded together and placed in a specific order by an artist, band or producer.When someone has a favorite album, it is not simply because a few favorite songs are featured, but because they are arranged, assembled and presented in a way that would not work in any other order. In some instances, the songs flow together into one long track, like the B-Side of "Abbey Road." (Ask your Grandma about B-Sides. Ask her about "Abbey Road," too).But the album still has its supporters. In a recent Billboard column addressed to musicians and record-makers everywhere, famed producer Quincy Jones offered a wise bit of advice to those despairing sorry sales. Make better music.Specifically, he asks artists and execs alike to "make your album so good that fans will want to buy the whole thing." He then offers a litany of classic albums, from "Kind of Blue" to "What's Going On," that could have been ignored for their singles, like a cherry Corvette pieced for parts.It's easy to complain about singles and much harder to make good music. But if you make it, they will come. I'm with Q on this one.(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. E-mail him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
We're slowly but surely losing the album
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