Tokage

I would honestly not object at all to having 1 release every half a year/every year, considering the fact that sometimes Western bands (and hell, even a bunch of Japanese bands) go -YEARS- without releasing new albums as well, but when they then do end up releasing something, it's usually a work of quality..

The crazy release schedules are another negative side-effect of this profit-orientedness of the industry. I can just name bands such as Mejibray or Kiryu as examples of bands who have somewhat started to creatively stagnate at some point just due to the large volume of work they have to churn out in order to stay relevant and bring in money. That's another problem that comes forth from this process - commodification of art = stagnation in many cases, or at least some process of ''appealing to the lowest common denominator''. You get a follow the leader-type of effect where people see that 1 thing works and brings in a lot of money and suddenly everyone's doing it, meaning it also smothers creativity. As @-NOVA-also brought up at some point regarding the whole ''5 billion types of the same single'' point, this is probably largely something that's pushed onto bands by their label, but still, the artists themselves are complicit in the process, because by signing the contract, they KNOW what they're getting into.

To continue the bakery analogy (which I don't entirely agree with, considering that bakers and musicians fulfill two very different cultural functions, but anyway), it's like baker X produces a chocolate cake that ends up becoming super popular, everyone wants it. Suddenly, bakers Y and Z also start focusing all their effort on producing chocolate cake and end up neglecting all their other products.

(ps i like that this ended up remaining a somewhat civilized discussion despite my admittedly rather clickbaity and provocative OP)

I don't see the point of this conversation really.

> You want your favorite bands to be able to stay together and keep making music - you support them financially.
> You don't care if they do and you're fine with listening to whatever music is available for free on bandcamp - your will, no one is taking the money out of your pocket.
> A fan buys an album and decides to share it, thinking the people who can afford to support the band will do just that and there's no point in keeping the music from the rest - awesome.
> Another fan judges that this will hurt the band's sales and never shares the album - also awesome. No point complaining if that means you never get to hear it.
> Band does [thing x] in hopes to make money - wonderful! The ball is back in the fans' hands.

Simple, eh? We vote with our actions and money for the future we want and we need to own up to it.