A recent Ars Technica piece reports that some pretty well-off artists want people to start buying albums instead of single tracks. No need to elaborate on this, artists have been discontent with not pushing enough filler tracks since the beginning of (legal) music downloads. Even before that, if I recall correctly. And just like it's only iPods – not other "media palayers" – that make kids unattentive or lose their hearing, their focal point of whining is Apple's iTunes store. It's perhaps a little justified after all, because Apple refuse to sell "albums" only. That's right, "albums" within quotation marks, because since the dawn of mp3 there is no physical album. It's just a bunch of tracks which the artist demands should be bought together. For one or both of typically two reasons. One being that the album is a sacred piece of art which cannot be properly understood on a per-track basis. The other being, that if the album is the smallest piece available, people buy that whether or not they're really interested in all of the tracks. Money in the bank.

The former argumentation for album sale rings a little hollow in my ears…I know for a fact that there are awesome concept albums around, where the whole experience is more than the sum of the parts squared. I know. But those albums, the ones I savor anyway, don't contain blockbuster hit songs in between the other Very Important Tracks. Well, some do, but in those cases I can see how folks with different taste can appreciate just those more accessible hit songs, and not care a lot about the others. Even with forced listening. I've tried, you know.

Either you like concept albums, in which case you don't "cherry-pick" because you want the whole cake. Or you don't, and while I myself belong to the former, I don't think anyone should have to outright pay for something they don't want. That's just encouraging production of more of the same thing, using the only language the music biz understands.

So please drop that and admit it's about the cold cash. Or just put those tracks that nobody buys out on BT and get that fuzzy warm feeling of art being consumed around the world.