Why are "musicians" taking so long to make their music? This album took Frank Ocean three years to make...

Why are "musicians" taking so long to make their music? This album took Frank Ocean three years to make. MGMT took three years between all their albums. Divers was Joanna Newsom's first album in five years. It's been almost three years since St. Vincent released an album. Adele took four years between her last two albums. And look at this:

The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
Hunky Dory (1971)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Pin Ups (1973)
Diamond Dogs (1974)
Young Americans (1975)
Station to Station (1976)
Low (1977)
"Heroes" (1977)
Lodger (1979)
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980)

And that wasn't uncommon - the first four Talking Heads albums were all released annually too. Same with the Beatles, one album a year. Making music is easier now than it was in the '70s. Is the reason musicians are taking so long to make music now? Is it because they're spending too much time on "celebrity" bullshit (attending award ceremonies, social media) and not enough time actually making music? It shouldn't normally take a musician three years to make an album if they're working on it even 5 days a week.

Turnover is much, much faster now in the internet age.

Prolific artists risk swamping listeners with too much material, that will become deemed too time consuming and difficult to navigate. People have less attention span nowadays and the marketplace is absolutely teeming with new music, constantly. In many ways we're living in the most conservative time for music, since everybody is their own curator. Listeners are less willing to "take a risk" or commit to a whole album, and if they're appearing often, it could be intimidating.

Mass piracy is partly to blame for this.

They tour more today because they get less money from sales

This too.

Because you used to make money through selling records alone. These dats you have to tour across the US and the world to make any money. Touring probably drains your creative energy

If you release 1 shitty album you lose your fanbase and you can't get it back, it wasn't the same back then. See MIA, who was a superstar, nearly household name before MAYA came out (which isn't even a bad album but it's seen as one), or Animal Collective who have been playing WAY smaller venues since Centipede Hz came out.

it's really kind of crazy the impact p4k / fantano et al can just bomb someone's career and livelihood

the teenage, memeing shitheads on Sup Forums have fucking power

They have too much power. And we give it to them t b h.

But t b h Radiohead has still continued to thrive despite getting relatively "bad" reviews for TKOL

everyone has a different work ethic, creative process, schedule, etc.

king gizzard is releasing five new albums next year, praise the lord

nah i don't know about this, it would be hard to keep them consistently good. i'd rather have quality over quantity

Thanks for the explanations. I'm a musician and I write/produce/sing/play all the instruments on my music and I'm also a full-time college student with a job, but I was able to make an album in a year, so I was confused about how full-time musicians can take so long to release stuff. These responses help me understand it better though.

Quality over quantity desu senpai

It's all about the marketplace and has always been about the marketplace. Even an album a year is a pretty slow pace even for someone who isn't a full-time musician, assuming they at least focus on it on a weekly basis. Anyone who can list "musician" as a career with a straight face should have no issues pushing 4-5 out in that time, the primary reason they don't is because it doesn't make for a great product and if you're looking at the commercial side of music the product is obviously quite important.

Everyone on Sup Forums downloads music, we have zero influence over an artist's income.

In his recent interview Frank revealed that he hit a creative barrier while writing the album, so that explains the long time, in addition to that he's perfectionist as fuck. There's a post on his brother's twitter about how whenever he visited Frank in the studio he felt ignored because Frank wouldn't stop working.

That's because Radiohead is actually popular while AnCo and M.I.A. only had indie cred and a hit single behind them respectively. P4K could easily destroy something like Car Seat Headrest or Mitski tomorrow if they wanted, since they we're never really that popular in the grand scheme of things and barring a radical shift in taste, they never will be. They could start demanding that everyone lynch Kanye and Béyonce and burn their vinyls, but it wouldn't phase those two one bit.

This is an interesting question, thanks for bringing it up let's keep this thread alive.

I feel like this one is probably correct. The average person won't know who AnCo is; M.I.A. maybe considering how big Paper Planes was...although that came out nearly a decade ago

Death Grips:

Exmilitary (2011)
The Money Store (2012)
No Love Deep Web (2012)
Government Plates (2013)
The Powers That B (2015)
Fashion Week (2015)
Bottomless Pit (2016)
Interview (2016)

> Different artists have different paces. Besides making an album can be a very long process that includes steps such as writing, collaborating with people/musician/producers, recording, mixing. This whole process can vary between a couple months to a couple year per track. Most song we hear have been to subjected to countless hours of work and refinement through the hands of several different people.

Plus the traditional model for artists nowadays is to promote an album for a cycle of about 2 years. Touring can interfere with the creative process as you are always on the go and focused on doing something else than writing music.

I feel that not many artists are able to release an album per year nowadays. Almost only manufactured pop star like Rihanna can do this, as they only serve as interpret to pre-written, pre-produced songs.

Bob Dylan released his 3 best albums in the span of a few months

>doesn´t share