In the 1950s, music radio operated on the basis of the '45 rpm single as the essential medium of musical recording. By extension, the basic unit of both musical production (what identified popular musical artists) and consumption (what defined the tastes of the listener) was the SONG.
In the 1960s, the wider availability of home stereos and the new platform of the 33 1/3 long playing record changed the way in which music was produced and consumed and made the basic unit of musical production and consumption the RECORD. As far as musical expression is concerned, the record matured with the Beatles, the Kinks and the Beach Boys, who really honed the idea of what a record was (a set of relations between songs as much as a bunch of individuated songs).
The apotheosis of the record in the 1970s, and the child of "concept" or "studio" albums like Pet Sounds, Sgt Peppers or The Village Green Preservation Society, was the aesthetic nightmare of progressive rock. Given the pedantic, pseudo-mystical and sophomoric-philosophical nature of prog, it is perhaps a good thing that contemporary transformations in the media of recorded music are pulling us away from the record and back towards the song.
In contemporary music, the MP3 reduces the unit of musical consumption to the song, and this transforms the nature of the music we listen to, as well as the relations of production that underlie it. No longer do musicians need to think very much about how songs fit together, but only how little to repeat the hook in order to incite repetitive listening. And once again the producer is repositioned from a technician assisting the musicians art to being the real artist and craftsperson moving the strings behind the faces that we mistakenly identify with the creative demiurge.
At the level of listening, nothing speaks to the transformed nature of music listening than the "shuffle songs" feature which is not only a key technical feature provided with MP3 players of all kinds, but the standard mode of listening as an individuated cultural phenomenon. We are less interested in listening to "artists" (as people who labour to create integrated works of art) than in listening to "songs" and responding to the jolt that comes with expectation of what the next track the computer will deliver to us will be. In this, more than anything, perhaps, we have allowed active listening to devolve into passivity in the face of technical manipulation. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood this evening thinking about the dishes....
