How streaming has killed the album but music artists aren’t ready to farewell the format yet

Aussie group Peking Duk have released massive hits over eight years but still haven’t made an album. As streaming kills off records, some say they won’t die. Have your say.

The album is spinning in a death spiral as music fans turn to playlists and social media viral videos even as artists desperately cling to the long-player art form.

The 2021 ARIA end of year charts showed album sales suffered a catastrophic hit from streaming during the pandemic, even as demand for vinyl rose worldwide.

The top 10 singles of the year in Australia generated “sales” totalling more than 46 times platinum – the equivalent of more than 3.2 million “copies”, calculated by combining fan consumption of streams, downloads and physical products.

Adele’s 30 record was the only one to break the one million mark in the US last year. Picture: WireImage

The biggest multi-platinum sellers included Heat Waves by British indie rockers Glass Animals, The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s Stay, his Without You “remix” with Miley Cyrus, the Olivia Rodrigo global smash Driver’s Licence and Dua Lipa’s Levitating.

But only five of the top 10 albums of the year managed to reach platinum status – Rodrigo’s Sour, Adele’s 30, Laroi’s F*ck Love “mixtape”, Bieber’s Justice and Harry Styles’ Fine Line, which was released way back in late 2019.

Adele’s 30, released in mid November, was the only record to crack the million mark in the US last year. Her previous record 25 sold 2.3 million in America in three days on its release in 2015 and at that time was the fastest-selling album of the 21st century.

Major and indie record labels are still backing the album, with big new releases confirmed from Midnight Oil, Kanye West, The Wiggles, Post Malone, Daniel Johns, Michael Buble, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Flume within the first half of 2022.

Peking Duk celebrate the vinyl revival at Repressed Records but are yet to do their debut record. Picture: Justin Lloyd

But for Australian festival party-starters Peking Duk, a succession of hit singles, including their latest drop Honest, have kept them booked for the big gigs over the past eight years.

The electronic duo of Adam Hyde and Reuben Styles say they have drawn up fantasy album tracklistings over the years.

But they have focused on delivering regular platinum bangers – High, Stranger, Fire, Sugar and Wasted – to keep fans engaged because “the whole game has changed.”

“It’s like you can go write an album, go on tour, go write another album – a few artists are still doing it that way – but it isn’t like that anymore. Now it’s bang, bang bang, feed the beast,” Hyde said.

There may not be a Peking Duk album in the works but the pair are playing with multi-track releases with Hyde’s side project Keli Holiday and Styles’ Y.O.G.A.

Styles said artists still have a lot of love for the album and EP format because it represents a creative body of work.

“It’s like an author writing a book or painter putting on an exhibition,” he said.

Kid Laroi’s “mixtape” kept him riding high on the album charts. Picture: Getty.

Artists with devoted fanbases and cultural influence have attempted to regenerate love for the long-player via the surprise album.

Beyonce showed everyone how it’s done with her self-titled record in 2013 and adapted the strategy for Lemonade in 2016. Both were also “visual albums”, part of her vision to reinstate a record release as a significant cultural event in the era of over-hyped singles.

Drake retooled the strategy, Eminem adopted it for his 2018 and 2020 albums and Taylor Swift only gave overnight notice about the imminent release of her Folklore and Evermore records.

But the novelty value of the surprise album has waned. Now it’s about the long tease, constant social media updates about the singles, the videos, the listening session and then the album drop.

Justin Bieber and Kid Laroi owned the singles charts with Stay. Picture: Instagram

In the post-album era, pop stars are also playing with the semantics of what makes a record.

Breakout Australian teen pop star The Kid Laroi has dominated the Australian charts since July 2020 when he released his “debut commercial mixtape” F*ck Love.

A “deluxe” version called F*ck Love (Savage) came out in November that year, rising to the top of the ARIA album chart in February.

The third instalment F*ck Love (Over You), which featured his global chart-topper Stay, was released in July last year and the collection of more than 30 songs finished 2021 as Australia’s third biggest seller.

Laroi grew up with the tradition of the hip hop mixtape, slipping demos of his work to American rappers when they hit Sydney.

Olivia Rodrigo’s succession of hit singles fuelled love for her debut album Sour.

He wanted his first major-label releases to be “mixtapes” to establish credibility as a songwriter, capture the evolution of his sound and build his fanbase via the a constant refresh of its tracklisting.

But the debut album is coming. Laroi started sharing scenes from the studio on social media in January, with his collaborators including Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and American rapper Don Toliver.

“Crazy it’s been like 7 months since I last dropped … I’m sorry I’ve kept you all waiting. It’s coming sooner than you think,” he posted last weekend.

The pop and rock stars whose careers were made in the album’s 1980s and 90s heyday will continue to be wedded to the long-form format.

Vinyl sales are keeping the record alive but that growth may stall this year as increased demand for the black plastic has blown out waitlists for production and shipping to nine months.

But Peking Duk see an upside in the new singles games. They can more easily road test their work-in-progress in front of huge festival and concert crowds and have an audience hungry for it when it emerges on streaming.

“The sweet smell of success (for a song) is sweat. We’ve been playing Honest in the set since Bass In The Grass last May and you can feel it from the crowd, you can taste it, if it’s the thing you really want to put out,” Styles said.

Originally published as How streaming has killed the album but music artists aren’t ready to farewell the format yet