by , 8:00 AM EDT, July 8th, 2003
Musician Ben Folds is moving away from the album format that has long been the staple of the recording industry. What will he be doing instead? According to an article in Billboard Magazine, he'll be releasing three five-song EPs this year that will be made available at his live shows, through his Web site, and via the iTunes Music Store. The decision to do this was driven by his contempt for traditional methods of distribution. From the article:
"I'm going to do things that are really more about the music for me and less about the hype," says Folds. "Because I'm on a major label, there is no escaping the way that we have to do business when I release an album -- everybody wants the 'Album of the Year' Rolling Stone bullsh*t where you get two-stars in the review and your face is all over the front. The way to bypass that for me is just to not go through the normal channels. And if I put out an EP, nobody can take it seriously."
[...]
"This way, I don't have to kowtow to the big-a** record chains and then in order to get a certain number of records shipped, I don't have to kiss radio people's a**es," says Folds. "And in turn, I don't have to do TV in order to get the radio slots and do certain kinds of press that I don't want to do. It's all kind of nice and the record business right now is going, 'Okay, any way you want to do it is totally fine because we're just barely getting by.' So, they are not arguing about that. [Epic] is pretty well aware that I'm not going to be competing with Shakira. It's a really nice musical way for me to do it. I just go into the studio, there is no 'How does this fit in with anything?' I just do five songs. It's music. People who know my music and know who I am can find it, and that's great."
Although Folds will continue to fulfill his contractual obligations by putting out albums periodically, he states that putting an album together is just "a matter of formality." As touched on recently in a TMO column, online distribution could herald many changes in the music industry. For Ben Folds's part, he feels that the recording industry may begin moving away from the album format in general. From the article:
"But I think the institution of the album may be going away. That's my gut feeling. I feel that it is more about songs and the album is a formality that packages things so that you can hype them real big and I'm just not very hype-able. We've tried that a couple of times and it is just not very effective."
For more on Ben Folds' LPs, including release dates, read the original Billboard article. Information on Ben Folds and his music can be found on his own Web site.
What is interesting to note here is that Ben Folds is circumventing the old traditional methods of his label, Epic, to put out collections of songs that don't classify as albums. By avoiding the typical marketing hype of regular album releases and keeping the format away from the standard album size, Ben Folds is working to bring consumer focus back to his music. While the success of such an approach for artists is unknown as of yet, we can only suspect that a push like this will prove to make the recording industry continue to examine alternatives to their current traditional album format and distribution methods.
It is going to be very interesting to see what Ben Folds's decision does to or for his career.