2008 marked yet another year in which the music industry saw a decline in total album sales. Of course, that figure looks less bleak when you factor in the big increase in digital music sales.
I can't imagine anyone actually thinking the industry will collapse so much that it will have to finally embrace the Internet and develop new strategies for promoting its product as well as getting people to buy it.
Ringtones are super popular given the millions of cellular phones being used in the U.S. and also the billions of cellular phones being used worldwide. Video games have also become a viable platform to sell music. Whether music will ultimately be given away for free remains to be seen.
Nevertheless, 2008 was still a good year for music, particularly for indie lovers. That being said, here is my top 5 favorite 2008 albums. None of which were, unsurprisingly among the year's top 10 selling albums.
5. Adele - 19
British singer-songwriter Adele seemed to never be mentioned when other British soul artists like Amy Winehouse and Duffy were discussed for their vocal talents. For some reason, even four Grammy nominations seems low for the very moving "heartbroken soul" sound of her debut album 19.
4. Ratatat - LP3
New York duo Ratatat continues their synth-driven electronica on their incredible third full-length album, aptly titled LP3.
Swedish artist Lykke Li (Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson) uses infectious dance pop to mask the awesomeness of true sensuality in her debut album Youth Novels.
2. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Canadian duo Crystal Castles proves that the electronic remix can be its own genre on their self-titled debut.
Devotion, the sophomore album of Baltimore duo Beach House, brings you as close to divinity as possible without listening to worship music or spending two Sunday morning hours in a church.
Honorable Mention:
El Perro Del Mar - From The Valley To The Stars
Hercules And Love Affair - Hercules And Love Affair
Article comments
1 - Jordan Richardson
Nice. I really liked that Beach House album and I just barely left it off of my own list. Beautiful stuff.
2 - Glen Boyd
Nice list Tan. But damn, no Fleet Foxes dude? I can already hear the sound of hearts -- okay, make that acoustic guitar strings and incense burners -- breaking all over Seattle.
-Glen
3 - Tan The Man
No Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver. They're great, but I didn't find myself hitting repeat nearly as much...
4 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
I can't imagine anyone actually thinking the industry will collapse so much that it will have to finally embrace the Internet and develop new strategies for promoting its product as well as getting people to buy it.
LMAO... I think you need to read more. Some keywords for ya: Solid State Hard Drives,Memristor,flac(lossless compression),Internet 2.0.
It is only a matter of time when people realize they can get better quality than Mp3 and still carry it around on a digital device. There are plenty of current devices that can play better formats but these new devices will hold much more information and be a lot smaller/thinner than they are now. Most consumers will not want to spend money on proprietary players just to get the latest advancement in technology, as evident with SACD & now Blu-Ray, having to buy more discs & have storage for them. Physical medium is a worn out idea & will get buried just like the change from Vinyl to Tape to CD. Remember, CD was successful due to the marketing about its "Compactness" & durability and then later on its sound quality. I see a trend...
5 - Tan The Man
Looking back, you're right, that sentence doesn't make too much sense...
6 - Albert Davis
I am completely at desagree with the idea of releasing music only by Internet download because THE QUALITY of the sound of the downloads is TOO POOR AND BAD. This would cause a backlash situation because many people are fallen in love with the interfase to manage music but they do not realise the quality of the music, this means, good interfase with bad quality, when the balance of the equation should be MUSIC WITH GOOD INTERFASE AND HIGH RESOLUTION AUDIO AT 5.1 CHANNELS SURROUND SOUND. Actually the only device which can provide this equation is the SACD. I have listened both formats MP3 and SACD, and the differential in quality is similar to the distance between land and sky, I mean, the quality of the SACD is not to be reached out by the MP3 format, hereby, I will only agree with you when a download of music has the similar the same quality than the SACD format. If you do not believe me, please, compare the difference between the quality of the DARK SIDE OF THE MOON album at SACD with the same downloaded at MP3.
7 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
For 5.1 channel support,Mr. Davis is correct,but, for CD quality from downloads, FLAC,Ape or WMA 9.2 will cover those concerns. A lot of people don't have good enough equipment to hear the difference between 850+Kbps Vs. 1440Kbps.