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

[koganbot]

I never believed the whole Death Of The Single thing that supposedly happened in the U.S. in the '80s and '90s, given that it was singles or hit album tracks that were selling the albums anyway, in most cases. So individual hit songs were still what the public heard. If you listened to Album Oriented Radio you were hearing hit tracks, whether a physical single existed or not. Physical single still seems to be something of a British fetish, but hit song and hit single have equivalent social meaning.

I wonder if now there might be an interesting quasi-reversal: albums as vehicles for promoting singles. "Album" is still a convenient way of organizing an artist's output in your mind if you're a radio station or record company or even a consumer who has no intention of buying the whole thing: "Taylor's fifth single off her first album" or "We've decided to drop Christina Milian after the first single tanked rather than push several more singles" etc. Also, is still an important tool for marketing reviews.

And most bands in the world aren't on the charts, so there's likely to be less of a promo focus on particular tracks and more on the artist, and again an album release (even if it's digital only) is still a way of focusing attention. Indies have been canny about using freebies and leaks to market their artists, but the album is still the focus around which they market the artist's work.

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

The fetishisation of the Physical Single is gradually dying off here - of the current Top 100, 9 songs have no physical release planned (but are being promoted as singles), and a further three are album tracks. Generally the biggest hits do still all get released physically, but I can see that changing in the next year:

5. (5) DISTURBIA (Rihanna) [No Physical Release]

15. (NEW) SPOTLIGHT (Jennifer Hudson) [No Physical Release]

25. (17) VIVA LA VIDA (Coldplay) [ALBUM TRACK]

33. (NEW) SWAGGA LIKE US (Jay-Z And TI feat Kanye & Lil Wayne) [No Physical Release]

36. (25) SPIRALLING (Keane) [No Physical Release]

49. (26) JUST STAND UP (Stand Up To Cancer) [No Physical Release]

55. (66) THE DAY THAT NEVER COMES (Metallica) [No Physical Release]

60. (93) WHATEVER YOU LIKE (TI) [ALBUM TRACK]

71. (108) THE GALWAY GIRL (Sharon Shannon And Steve Earle) [No Physical Release]

84. (NEW) LOVE LOCKDOWN (Kanye West) [No Physical Release]

91. (143) THIS IS ME (Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas) [ALBUM TRACK]

100. (62) BRUISED WATER (Chicane vs Natasha Bedingfield) [No Physical Release]

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well as I said up above, it's also the preferred format for a lot of artists! They'll have grown up with albums, they're used to albums being given greater respect and critical weight, I suspect also (Kat, can you confirm?) there's an advantage in publishing money in selling your latest 10 tracks as a bundle, and mentally it's a way of organising and periodicising your work. I think persuading bands to stop making albums won't become easy for quite a while.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes, even artists in singles-driven genres will tend to want to make albums.

I feel like an outlier statistic whenever reading about how people consume music, but physical singles are the most baffling: in this day and age, who still buys these and why?