Why the record industry is killing the single
One of the most hallowed symbols of rock 'n' roll is on its way out, and consumers -- and artists -- are the losers.
Topics: Music, Entertainment News
Is the pop single — the most venerable and fabled of rock’s artifacts — dead?
At one time, singles made up a hefty part of the record industry’s income. At the format’s height, American consumers bought nearly 100 million a year.
But things have changed. Record companies want consumers to buy full-length CDs when they fall in love with a song. So they’ve shut off the spigot when it comes to releasing less expensive commercial singles to retail. Consequently, the format remains in a free fall; with fewer singles available, sales are down 40 percent this year, according to SoundScan, to a total of about 30 million, and there’s no end in sight to the slide.
The debate rages. Labels insist they simply cannot make a big enough return if fans are buying $3 singles instead of $16 albums. Retailers, though, fume that they’re suffering without singles, which have historically increased foot traffic in stores, especially among younger shoppers.
Labels like the single when it suits their purposes; during parts of the overheated 1990s, labels released them in floods at deeply discounted prices to help promote blockbuster albums and claim fanciful new sales records (i.e., “Mariah Carey’s new single entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 1!”; truth was, it sold for 49 cents).
But that was then, this is now, and the music fans are the losers.
The drawbacks to the industry’s singles strategy were on full display following Sept. 11, when Enya, Alan Jackson, James Taylor and Neil Young all released songs that either directly addressed the terrorist attacks, or tapped into the country’s deeply felt need for healing. The songs demonstrated how pop music, perhaps more than any other mainstream art form, can effectively, and quickly, enter our collective conscience. Yet, in an illustration of how the music industry too often treats its customers, none was released as a single in a timely fashion, leaving consumers with no way of purchasing the songs, since they didn’t appear on current album releases either.
The most dramatic example was Enya’s “Only Time.” Released as a single to radio in August, the Celtic, New Agey song about love and remembrance was almost immediately adopted by programmers as a sweeping requiem for the nation. The only hitch was that the single sent to radio was a remix and dramatically different from the version on the album, which had been in stores since November 2000. That meant the nearly 1 million fans who went out and bought Enya’s CD after Sept. 11 hoping to enjoy the same “Only Time” they’d heard on the radio were sorely disappointed. Instead, they heard the original, non-remix version.
Eric Boehlert, a former senior writer for Salon, is the author of "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush." More Eric Boehlert.



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