Is the Single, Single?

Written by: Moses Avalon on December 19, 2008.

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Conventional Wisdom Challenged: Are Albums Due for a Comeback?

Boy, it seems that everywhere you look there’s another story about how CD sales are down and digital single sales are the new wave. What if that turned out to be a fallacy?Think of how many curmudgeon bloggers would be disappointed; how many so-called journalists and Billboard “reporters” would be discredited.You’d have a sea of people back-pedaling their statements of the past two years.You know who would not be in that crowd.You.Not if you’re one of my readers.

If you’ve been keeping up with the fact threads I follow– y’know, dumb stuff that I use to come to my conclusions, like annual reports from Big Four record labels (or Big Three, depending on how you look at it) and Big Box retailers, you’d get a very different picture than the nay-sayers who substitute real data for their own opinions based on who knows what– their anger management sessions, I guess.

Here’s a video of what I’m talking about:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOR3Wm5Dn4A[/youtube]

Fact: CDs and albums are far from becoming roof-shingles.Furthermore, I predict that labels and artists will begin truncating “single rights” to stores like iTunes and Amazon within the next year. Why? There are many reasons, but the most apparent one is people like to pay less for music.$9 for 13 songs beats 99 cents for a single.Sure the tech-whores like to retort that the public doesn’t want to pay $9 for only one good song.But this presumes the entire album sucks – all the time!What surveys are they using other than their own personal taste?

This story in Red Orbit tells it all.

Albums DO sell if they are good. But is this a new lesson?No.Labels and artists have known this for decades.Additionally, the entire music business economy is based on the Album configuration.Publishing advances are totally designed around albums.Can you imagine trying to negotiate a publishing advance when the label says “We’re not going to print any CD Albums, just post a couple of singles on digital stores?”Absurd!There would be nothing to base the advance upon.No advances means no flow of capital and most of us who passed High School Economics know what that means. (BTW -I failed that class.)

Want another reason?Albums are cool!It’s a cohesive, 50-minute vision of sound.Singles were created as an economic reality to selling Albums, not a substitute for them.Tech-Masters like Steve jobs don’t care about the integrity of music.No human who invented the best way to buy, catalog and steal individual tacks can be a real fan of modern music!I remember trying to get my mother to join the iPod generation by telling her that it could hold her entire classical collection.She responded, “But it cuts up the symphony into little bits.You’ve not supposed to listen to a symphony that way.” [iTunes used to treat movements like singles and wouldn’t play them seamlessly.]

I was ashamed.My 70 year old mother “got it” before I did: music is about creativity, not the technology you play it on.Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a music-hater, even if they don’t know it inside.They have sold their souls to the Tech gods if they truly believe that artists should start making three-minute singles and forget about their Album vision just because it’s more convenient.

Music lives!Albums live!And now the sales numbers prove it.

Mo out.