Not necessarily CD's

Factual Questions
1

What’s the generic term for a musical recording that doesn’t refer to its medium? I like to call it an album (using definition 2.5):
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=album

But if I ask a Young Whipper-Snapper what the number one album in the country is, he’ll say something like “They’re not albums, they’re CD’s, dEwD!” I’m not looking for the number one CD, I want to know the number one recording, regardless of medium. But the word “recording” seems so… formal.

What do you call a musical recording, without referring to its medium?

2

I vote for album. But do they keep records (no pun intended) of total album sales not broken down by medium? Where’s Satan when we need him?

De gustibus non est disputandem

3

When a musical work is memorialized on tape or cd it is “recorded” so just go ahead and use recording and tell the young whipper snappers to cram it.

“Look honey, there’s the little dipper, I’d show you the big dipper but my zipper is stuck.”
-aha

4

*pluto: Where’s Satan when we need him? *

Just draw a pentagram on the floor and chant. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Everybody got to elevate from the norm - Rush

5

Just tell the whipper-snapper “Learn to use a dictionary, dude!”. Mine says:

album 2: one or more recordings (as on tape or disk) produced as a single unit.

Singles, ep’s, albums (aka lp’s) indicate the quantity of music. Tapes, records, eight-tracks, cd’s, mini-discs, etc indicate the media.

6

Since “album” was coined to refer to multiple 78-rpm disks (which originally came in something resembling a photo album), I don’t think the change in media requires any change in name. “Album” has come to me “multiple tracks of recorded music in one format.”

“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx

Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

7

Billboard magazine calls them albums. That’s good enough for me.