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

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

but they're not really comparing apples with apples (hahahaha, honestly not an intentional pun!!!) are they?

100 million individual tracks downloaded != 100 million single sales

ppl be cherry picking tracks they like, not tracks The Man has decided they can buy...

[vumgarda.livejournal.com]

Because people who want 2 old songs by a band (which wouldn't be easily available on their own) now download 2x'single' rather than buy 1xalbum, innit. If you just looked at equivalents to things that would have been available before, sales must be well down.

[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.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

And don't forget the Leona Lewis effect innit.

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

How does this work with regards the charts anyway? Like does an individual track have to be flagged as a single to be considered for the chart?

Like if some obscure album track by someone happened to be featured in a popular tv commercial, causing 100,000 people to buy it through iTunes, would it chart?

In my mind, it ought to - it would cause the top 40 to be a direct reflection of what's popular with a nation, rather than seemingly being the most popular songs from a range of the industry's pre-selection.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

A very interesting thread... here's a question for you all to ponder this afternoon:

If a band releases a new album and 6 of the songs sell very well individually upon the album's release (through word of mouth, familiarity from festival and TV performances, general fan interest, ability to listen to clips before buying), does that make it less likely that a band/label will want to promote those songs as "singles" several months down the line? Will the new status quo result in more pressure on bands to release fresh output more frequently? Did Ash have it spot on when they made their announcement to ditch the album format and just go with regular EP-type releases?

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i think it says something (not a bad something, just a something) about our little group that this has got us more animated than any post about Actual Music for a fair while...

[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.

[koganbot]

I don't know if this is relevant, but in the U.S. Kid Rock is still refusing to release a digital version of "All Summer Long," which means that three different versions of the song have charted: his, one by Hit Masters, and now one by The Rock Heroes.