An interview on Time.com I recently read, with author and musician Elijah Wald being questioned on his recently released book How The Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll, got me thinking about the state of the musical record albums. Albums are fairly new, in the context of the history of music, and the creation of such has become an art form in itself.

Here is an Elijah Wald quote from the Time article:

The Beatles were the first superstar pop group to simply cease to exist except on record. As late as the 1940s, pop music was what bands played when people went out dancing. The records were just what you listened to at home. The Beatles were the first group to realize that pop had become records, and that they never needed to step on a stage again in their lives. That’s a huge shift, and [although] I think it would have happened without them, they were the catalysts.

So, now we are in a world where there is another huge shift. Artists are struggling to profit from record sales. Even the best artists. In today’s economy with the technology available to us free music downloading is becoming fairly standard. Yes, randomly we hear about someone getting fined for hundreds of thousand of dollars by the RIAA, but for the most part there is little to no threat against illegal downloading.

For the first time in about 40 years artists are faced with the situation where the album once again is supporting the live performance. No longer can artists solely record albums and expect to make a living. The question now becomes whether the art form of making an album will be lost, and the focus of artists will shift to live performances or artists will continue to focus much of their efforts on making the best studio albums possible in hopes of boosting touring attendance and revenue? And what of artists with limited live appeal (but perhaps brilliant albums), do they get weeded out in this tough economy? It seems only time will tell for many of these questions as we progress into a new age of popular music.