A favorite debate of mine was rekindled in my brain (and now, here, and hopefully again in the comments) by this excellent post by singer and former Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty. His main target is the year-end lists of best albums (an argument that's valid, but a little early, I think), but the blast encompasses a point that I side very strongly with: that the concepts of albums and singles are dying, and the music world will be much better off when they're gone.

Albums as we know them (ie, between 45 and 80 minutes long) were not an invention born of a logical artistic progression: they were the product of the medium itself. The LP was invented, and then artists--doing what artists do--molded their art to fit it, finding ever-inventive ways to be creative within that constraint.

And even during that time, you can still find art straining at the edges of that constraint. You have live albums and seamless albums where they have to fade to allow the side to end. Yes, there's some brilliant ways around that and many of those side changes have become classic in themselves, but it's still a way around that constraint.

The single was defined by the LP as well. Before LPs, it was only genre and taste that separated a simple novelty song from an extended jazz song or multi-suite classical piece. The introduction of the LP meant that the shorter records became a separate approach to a release (the Beatles were great at knowing the difference, and so were Belle & Sebastian in their early days), but eventually, the single became just a cut from the album that was selected by chart-friendliness, and so eventually got to be seen as a lesser art form.

The recent resurgence of vinyl records and the clinging to it as an artform that's separate from a single song is nothing more than conservativism: a stubborn resistance to change and/or a romantic view of the past. The LP is no more the apex of musical creativity than rock music is the logical extension of all music. It was a great moment in music history whose time is just about up, if only because the art can now extend beyond it. It may be loved, but it's on the path to obsolescence.

It's a sad movement in a lot of ways. I grew up with album releases being huge moments of my music life. But what will take its place is just as exciting: music will no longer be lumped it with other releases that happen to have approximately the same running time (LP, EP, single w/ b-side), and will just be releases. Artists who have one song to release can do that, it can exist alongside music that works better in a six song grouping or a massive 4-hour piece. Digital music means there aren't any restrictions. Artists have to tap into the creative knowledge of when a work is just done, rather than saying, "There's 12 songs, we're done with the record." Filler will be history.

Likewise, this goes with record reviews. Reviewers are going to have to give up on the convenient groupings of albums and single tracks. I have to admit to having a personal perspective on this: in a few months, the band I play in will be finishing up recording six songs (clocking in at around 20 minutes) and releasing them digitally, and it's frustrating to think of this release being called an EP, as though the number of songs and length of the release implies that it's a glorified single or a stopgap album, but it's neither.

Obviously, I'm still a fan of the current concept of albums. There's no denying that, for the last 40-50 years, it's become the ultimate artistic statement for music. But it can be (and eventually will be) much more than what we currently think of as albums, and like almost all other inventions, what we lose with its demise will be more than made up for in the advances ahead.