The sales numbers from 2007 paint a gloomy picture for the music industry. According to an article dated January 10th in “The Economist,” music industry giants like EMI are concerned that the money the industry can count on from paid digital music downloads in coming years is not enough to keep the industry afloat through unprecedented drops in physical CD sales. However, the digital music revolution has another more important casualty: the album itself.

Our generation needs to ask itself what the purpose of music will be in the digital age. If music exists only to entertain, then so be it. Carry on, Soulja Boy. But if music exists to respond to and ultimately alter our society, as I like to think it does, then the album is the forum for that dialogue, not the single.

Musicians need to push back. The truly great musicians of the 20th century were separated from the commercial flash-in-pans by their ability to write cohesive and influential albums as substantive support for their singles. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, The Beatles’ Revolver and The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street — these are true needle-drop albums that made mainstream music a medium of social change rather than a form of escapism.

Since the early 1980’s, specifically with the release of Def Leppard’s Hysteria, the single has taken over as the focus of mainstream artists across the genres. This resulted in a profusion of decent singles on mediocre or downright bad albums in the 1990’s (with a few glimmering exceptions like Jeff Buckley’s Grace and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill). It is no wonder that the iTunes revolution emerged as a response to the shallow mainstream hip-hop and the pop idolatry of the 90’s.

However, even hip-hop (a primarily singles-dominated genre) is subject to the power of the album. The artists that changed the game in hip-hop did so not just with brilliant hooks, but with powerful concepts extended into albums (see first: Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back)

Most importantly, if musicians stop writing good albums, their product is essentially worth the 99 cent price of a song in the digital world when it used to be worth $10 as part of an album. That spells disaster for the future of music and could deter up-and-coming artists who may have more to say than our current lot.

The singles culture is irreversibly based on image and immediate satisfaction; a culture where danceability takes precedence over intelligent songwriting; a culture that no longer aims to find the next Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix or Marvin Gaye but rather is content to find the next pretty face to superimpose on the same old beats. It is our responsibility as listeners and the musicians’ responsibility for the future of their art to reverse this trend.

The album’s demise will make music of quality much harder to come by, especially in genres like progressive rock that are traditionally album-based. It will be up to our generation to find a way to keep the album alive by encouraging artists like Radiohead that break free of major-label standards and find their own means of distribution. Or, they should perpetuate innovation and experimentation in music without the album as a drawing board.

Tell Sean how important you think the album is to the future of the music industry. E-mail [email protected]