Dwight Yoakam photo by Cambria Harkey, courtesy of New West Records.
The recording business has gone through fundamental changes several times, driven by the evolution of technology. For decades in its beginning stages, the industry made its money on the sales of singles. The Beatles helped develop an album mentality, and that was heightened by the introduction of the CD in 1983. With the growth this decade of iTunes and digital downloading, the pendulum has swung back toward sales of individual songs.
While many country performers admittedly tried to make albums full of potential singles, Dwight Yoakam has viewed his albums as an artistic statement, which is part of the reason that his most recent release, Dwight Sings Buck, was a tribute to the late Buck Owens.
That was two years ago, and Dwight’s ready to crank out more new material. But he’s been watching the landscape closely, and he’s thinking strongly about tossing aside the album format — at least temporarily — as he figures out what to do with the latest songs he’s written. There’s a strong possibility he may record them one at a time and put them out as individual tracks online instead of making them part of a package.
“There’s something freeing about that,” he told The Houston Chronicle. “It was the way just about everybody did it. But that ended post-Sgt. Pepper’s. My entire career I’ve had to think about a record as 10 to 12 songs, a body of work to be presented to a label. The paradigm has shifted, but nobody’s certain about where it shifted to. We know from what but not to where.”
New music isn’t the only thing on the horizon for Dwight. He worked earlier this year in North Carolina on Provinces Of Night, a film that also features Val Kilmer, Hillary Duff and Kris Kristofferson. The indie title is expected to hit theaters in 2010.
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I want more Dwight, I don't care how they package him, just bring him out!
I would never pay money for an MP3 file. MP3s are an inferior format. MP3s are NOT CD quality. Some people can hear the difference between CD and MP3. CD quality is 1411 kbps, which is technically about 10 times higher than MP3 quality. MP3 strategically discards audio information that is less audible to the human ear, which helps it achieve a small file size without sacrificing much audio quality.
One disadvantage of MP3 or any other lossy compression is that if you later decide to convert your MP3s to a newer lossy format, such as AAC (iTunes format), you will lose a small amount of audio quality. This is called generation loss. It's like when you make a photocopy of a photocopy; the quality is reduced each time. That's why I rip the CDs I care about using lossless formats such as FLAC or Apple Lossless instead of MP3.
Dont brother playing top50 sweeps or voting code words do not work on eather for past
couple days
I think the downloading/singles thing is a total drag. I like having the package for all of the material including the list of players. Not all of us appreciate walking around with pods in our ears. I also think the industry is missing sales to people who simply want to buy a CD because they understand how it works.
Krista, I too, like to have the full album. I'm not a big fan of buying one song from like iTunes or Amazon. I like knowing I have the whole thing and that it's mine!
Love Dwight's music. Hope he records something new soon. Singles or Cd's, I would hope for CD, but would buy singles. Last saw Dwight in 2005, hoping to see him again in 2010!!!
Jean
Not crazy about this idea. I still like buying CDs and having music as a package. Love Dwight music.
I am so happy he is thinking about singles. I will buy every one of them. Been missing Dwight alot . Love Buck Owens songs and no one can sing them like Dwight. Last time hubby and I saw him was years ago in Bakersfield Ca. Awsome. Some day before I die……I have got to meet him in person. Now I am in the mood to play his music now and listen to his voice.