Factoid

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

According to this morning's paper, 2008 is set to be the highest-selling year for singles EVER, with total sales topping 100m for the first time (compared to 1979's 89m). Obviously physical sales are a miniscule proportion of this but even so, that's a lot of sales. (And christ only knows how many non-sale downloads are going on).

I was a bit surprised by this!

Comments

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

There's also the long tail effect going on here - in the good old days, most people would only have been able to buy what was physically available in their local shop - i.e. the top 75 and maybe some new releases. Now they have a choice of millions of tracks it's no surprise they're buying more in total, even if they are buying a lot less of the top 75, hence number one sales being way lower than they have been historically.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Number one sales are running at 40-50k or so I think, which is low compared to the vinyl era but higher than the 20-30k of the early 00s. I'll be interested to see what kind of totals the big sellers this year post, given the propensity of tracks to stick around in the charts forever on download: there's no need to buy a track while it's still 'hot' so downloads have the effect of flattening the head as well as lengthening the tail.

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

there's also the thing where before you kinda had to buy a single when it was hot, because it wouldn't be around for purchase once it cooled. Now, it doesn't matter, because even if they remove the "single" from iTunes (3 tracker or whatever), you can cherry pick anyway.

really, it's the concept of the single as an entity which is doomed now. it's not top 40 singles anymore, it's top 40 songs.

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

I mean cherry pick from the album / NOW XX or whatever.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where the distinction lies!

Also, a lot of this is assuming that "the album" is here to stay as a basic format. At the moment albums exist because they are a more profitable format than releasing tracks one at a time: if the upward trend of digital song sales continues, how long will this be the case?

(Actually I think the 'death of the album' has been a bit overstated - there's other reasons to keep them around: artists like thinking in album terms, and they're a good way to sell a bunch of less immediate new tracks without having to promote the wretched things.)