This is my understanding: an ‘album’ is a discrete collection of songs by an artist (single or collective). Such collections retain their coherence, and constitute an identifiable category, by dint of a recognizable musical, sonic or lyrical signature. At the same time, they are constrained (to a greater or lesser extent) by the technological limitations which were instituted by the invention of vinyl in the 1940s - which is to say: approximately 30 – 50 minutes of music, organized into ‘songs’, dispersed over two sides of a 12-inch, 33-rpm record.
I think it’s possible to regard most CDs since their invention in the early 1980s as operating along the same continuum as vinyl albums, because they adhere more or less to this model - i.e. an artist releases a collection of new songs with which they are identifiably associated.
To my mind, such a model allows for a multitude of texts - 'albums' - but is clearly set against other texts, models and practices, including:
* Best
of
… and Greatest Hits collections;
* random compilations of the Now That’s What I Call Music variety;
* random compilations organized in terms of genre (e.g. folk or jazz), style (e.g. punk or Britpop), scene (e.g. Northern Soul or Seattle), era (e.g. 1960s), or any other arbitrary category;
* recordings of works conceived under the auspices of alternative musical dispensations – e.g. symphonies, lieder, opera; this would also bar recordings of event-oriented dance music (e.g. trance or house) unless intentionally released by an artist as a coherent collection;
* alternative formats generated as a result of digital technology (Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc.).
The key issue, so far as I can see, is that between the ‘album’ and the ‘record’, which in itself mirrors the difference between the ‘novel’ and the ‘book’. There are some great ‘books’ (poetry, drama, cookery, travel, history, etc.) that would be out of place in a club dedicated to discussing ‘novels’; just so, from my perspective there are some great ‘records’ that are out of place in a club dedicated to discussing ‘albums’.
