The Return of the Single and
the End of the Album
 If you grew up before the
1990s, you probably fondly remember singles -- those 7"-diameter records that
featured one song to a side. I still have some embarrassing singles from before I was ten,
including at least two by the Village People. The late 1980s and early ’90s saw a
flourishing singles scene in indie rock, with some labels, such as Sub Pop, even
sponsoring singles clubs, whose members were regularly sent limited-edition singles. This
proved a great way to discover new bands -- take $20 to the record store and you could
come home with lots of new music by a wide variety of artists. Unfortunately, by the
mid-1990s, singles had all but disappeared from most of the record stores I frequented.
Before the CD, a single with two songs on it represented
about one-fifth of an album and was priced accordingly. When albums cost $6, I remember
buying singles for 99¢. But, by the 1990s, CD prices had come down while their playing
times had increased, and the price of a single, whether on LP or CD, had risen so that you
were getting less than a fifth of an album for close to half the price. This probably
played some role in many labels essentially abandoning singles as a medium. According to a
recent Washington Post article, by 2002 singles accounted for less than 7% of
record sales.
The decline of singles sales coincided with the first wave
of peer-to-peer file sharing. The original Napster always seemed more of a headache than a
useful tool, but there was no doubt that it could introduce one to new music. Not only was
it cheaper than buying singles (those pesky artists don’t need to get paid, do
they?), but downloaders didn’t end up with boxes and boxes of records that needed to
be stored.
Now, with the success of Apple’s iPod and iTunes, the
single has returned in a new digital format. People no longer need go to their local
record store (if they even have one) to get their singles fix; rather, they turn on their
computers and find songs to download.
The new digital singles scene can be lucrative for bands,
especially those who are relatively unknown. The same Washington Post article
describes how the rap group D4L has sold more than 700,000 downloads of their song
"Laffy Taffy." Will "Laffy Taffy" have the staying power of the great
singles of the 1960s and ’70s? Probably not, but downloading has made it
exceptionally easy for people to purchase such songs, enjoy them for a few weeks, and then
forget about them. In the past, "Laffy Taffy" might have been a regional hit;
now, with digital music services, it can be a global one. Unfortunately, downloads come
with none of the romance I associate with my favorite little black discs -- no colorful
sleeve, and no need to be physically engaged in playing the singles, as with a turntable.
One thing that I think the success of iTunes and digital
singles makes clear is that the days of the album are numbered. iTunes lets its
subscribers buy individual songs from nearly any album in an artist’s catalog -- but
if those people are happy to download a song here and there from a given band, they
won’t be as willing to buy an entire album by that group. iTunes seems to be
fostering this new singles culture with their use of celebrity playlists and the iMix
feature. Their celebrity playlists offer users the ability to download various
celebrities’ lists of their favorite songs. Want to download what Penn Jillette,
Ryuichi Sakamoto, or "Weird Al" Yankovic like to hear? While I don’t
download music, I’ve been sucked into looking over several of these playlists, and
there were some interesting finds. iTunes’ iMix feature allows anyone to construct a
playlist on their computer and publish it for others to see -- celebrity playlists for
noncelebrities.
There can be no doubt that the primary musical unit on
iTunes is the single. If this is the way of the future, then it no longer makes sense for
bands to think in terms of albums. They’ll be better served by concentrating on
singles, releasing one or two songs every few months instead of an album every year or
two. The Washington Post reports that artists receive between 14¢ and 24¢ for
each single download, and about $2 for an album sale. The move toward singles may not be
as lucrative for artists, but most consumers are sure to be happy with the ability to
select just which songs they purchase.
What concerns me, though, isn’t the artists’
financial health, but the decline of the album as an art form. Sure, plenty of albums are
just 10 or 15 songs thrown together, but the best are more than the sum of their parts.
Consider having "So What" without the rest of Kind of Blue, "God
Only Knows" without Pet Sounds, or "Smells Like Teen Spirit" without
Nevermind. Each is a great song, but each is even better when taken as a part of
its surrounding album.
I wonder if we’ll find that albums were just a
temporary delivery method for music. It may well be that soon all music will be just a
download away, and all physical storage formats, such as records and CDs, will be relics
of the past. One thing that bothers me about this is that it seems that all music could
quickly become background music. If users become so divorced from the act of playing
music, then music’s role as art may diminish. I think people should be engaged with
the music they listen to, and that means taking it seriously. My reason for this is
altruistic: I believe that engaging with music, as with the other arts, can make the
listener a better person. If music becomes only background noise -- if everything is
treated as music for airports -- we’ll all lose out on the emotional and intellectual
highs that can come from music.
Two products that can help you reach those highs are the
Benchmark DAC1 D/A converter and the ADC1 A/D converter, both of which I review this
month. The DAC1 has seen no shortage of favorable reviews, and the time I spent with the
ADC1 convinced me that the DAC1’s quality had been no fluke. Benchmark may think of
professional audio engineers as their target market, but their gear can be just as
rewarding for the diehard music fan.
…Eric D. Hetherington
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