Mos Def appeared on BenjiB’s BBC radio show (available until January 24) .  The three part show was about one hour Mos music from BenjiB, one hour of music and interview, and one hour of Mos behind the deck.

I thought Mos’ thoughts on the industry, singles, and albums were interesting and struck me as accurate.  I’ll paraphrase:

• Mos Def puts a lot of effort into making complete albums.  He cited Stevie Wonder’s (5) masterpieces and a desire to pay due respect to the form.
• The music industry, nonetheless, was born of singles.  Motown, for example, was built one track at a time.
• The album was born out of recognition that the costs of promoting singles could be spread across greater revenue by selling collections of songs.
• Thanks to technology, consumers are focused on singles again, so albums are losing their cash-cow status.

This line of thought matches up with a piece I posted here some months ago.  The idea is that as greater efficiency is introduced into the marketplace—in this case, marketing efficiency—more targeted products proliferate.

I expect albums still have their place; particularly, if they are presented as an integrated (or, cohesive) whole.  Mere collections (greatest hits albums would be an extreme example) are less likely to succeed because consumers don’t want to pay for tracks they don’t want and don’t need to buy a complete album to get the 2-6 songs they do want.

Seems so simple it hardly seems worth saying… maybe it’s harder to accept when you’ve got a catalog of albums 1000’s deep to sell.