Should we keep it even though clearly most people are streaming instead of buying?

Is it pointless because something is going to eventually replace Streaming anyways?

Albums as a commercial product only really started in the 1950s (music is thousands of years old)

I ask this because it used to be pretty simple to determine who had more commercial success, the artist who sold the most albums, but now an artist can have low album sales but high monthly streaming listeners, high streams for albums and individual songs

Like

Em selling a million first week is different from

Wayne selling a million first week which is different from

Drake selling a million first week

Because they’re all from different eras and the musical landscape has changed so much between their primes, simply using these numbers to determine their success compared to each other would always be inaccurate

no its mostly market manipulation anyway

The mere existence of an album is so counterintuitive to how humans naturally take in and enjoy music that there’s no way around high album sales being impressive. I’d say even more so the less there’s a real need to buy/engage with them (ie during the streaming era)

So the answer is a resounding yes

Man what

There’s no need to consume an album for the average listener, especially during the streaming era. So if someone is selling high it’s impressive

Therefore the answer to OP’s question is yes nigga

its not really different to ig followers or youtube views i mean i think caring about any of this s*** is weird but its neat to have a platinum plaque hanging on the wall (i guess?)

That other stuff could be manipulated too especially monthly listeners and the longevity for an album when one song is the majority of steams and it's on every playlist. High first week sales is really a way to measure how big a fan base is and it's good for that. Yeah people like Jay have manipulated it but it's easy to tell when that happens.

Stuff like RIAA certifications are a real good way to measure commercial success because we have to use real numbers as a means to find a factual answer.

I think that's just you. Most people generally find an artist or band they honestly like and really do listen to the whole album. Even the "casual" has an artist they're a die hard fan of. (I know the term casual is pretentious but we're generalizing)

i think they should change it to a big list of top 50 albums and singles on a wall where anthony fantoano is tasked with moving the order around every 15 mintutes with no rest. he chooses as he sees fit but he is never allowed to do stop and anything else, he can never leave the list the same after each 15 min

But by that logic people who sold millions of albums when it really mattered like Madonna aren’t as astronomically big compared to someone like Ariana Grande because buying physical copies was the only way to listen to an album in Madonna’s era

Who knows how much Ariana would have sold if we weren’t in an era where there were more options

My point is album sales are kind of irrelevant in this climate, and if it’s purpose is determining how many hardcore stans you have, then it kind of deems the album sales of Prince, Madonna, etc. irrelevant because it doesn’t show how many hardcore stans they had, just how many people listened to their albums

recorded music was only profitable for a short time (still not really cause labels would take most of it)

money always and always will come from shows and niggas like beethoven were rich as f*** in their time too

huh?

Okay? compare to albums from that year/era then.

Not everyone does that

Nah I agree with @Brave

playlists are far more common than listening to albums front to back

“Most people”

If this were true then everyone even remotely A list would be doing Adele numbers regularly

Your premise is that the difference in what album sales indicate today (a hardcore fanbase) vs before (how many people consumed your music) has to cancel the other out

The simple answer is: the significance of album sales has transformed but they still matter. Can you argue they matter less? I guess so