Singles vs Albums----from AI

[miTunes75]

I was watching AMerican Idol the other night when Chris Brown and Jordan Sparks sang. Jordan, then was given some awards. One was for over a million downloads or her song, "Tattoo". The other one was for over a million downloads of her song, "No Air". Another one for over 500,000 copies of her album sold. Hmmm....single songs, versus album sales. It seems ppl are become more single-song oriented. This is a bad sample as it's just one artist out of tens of thousands. But, it made me think a little bit.

Input?

[bdb]

American Idol is about radio- and MTV-friendly pop music. That stuff has always been focused on singles. For those kinds of singers, "albums" were just a way to get people to pay $16 for 1 -3 singles, with a bunch of inconsistent quality filler. Pay downloads allow customers to just buy the singles.

[urbanlegend]

Originally Posted by bdb

Pay downloads allow customers to just buy the singles.

indeed. just like we used to with 45's.

sometimes you want just the song - especially for some pop songs and novelties. sometimes you want the full album.

john

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by miTunes75

It seems ppl are become more single-song oriented. This is a bad sample as it's just one artist out of tens of thousands. But, it made me think a little bit.

Input?

The market has almost always been singles oriented. It was only for a brief run of a few decades (roughly sometime in the 60s through sometime in the 90s) that albums became more of a focus. First because of some genuinely great album artists, later more because of shifts in the technology and label marketing. Whereas when I was young you'd go into a music store and half was various 45 singles, by the time cassettes and later CDs had become the dominant media, singles were relegated to a small subset of music offered in stores. As music sales shifted away from music stores and into big chains, it was even further marginalised since it takes the same amount of shelf space to sell a CD single at $3 or $4 as it does a full album for $10-$15. Now that issues of shelf space and packaging are being removed, we are again returning to a market where single sales are important again.

If you're not going to put together an album which holds together as an album, and few artists, even if they are very talented do, there's no reason why the fans or the market should be afraid of singles.

It's the same backwards funnel that drives "best of" albums. There's some number of people who really love a band - they buy everything. There's some other larger number that really like a band - they buy a lot of their stuff. Then there's those who only like a band - they grab the best of album. Then there's those who only like a song or three that caught their ear - they grab the single(s).