The New York Times has a good story about the music industry continuing to dither over sales of digital singles. It includes one amazing fact: Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" has sold 275,000 copies online (and it's my nephew's favorite song OF ALL TIME!). Labels are petrified this will cut into sales of greatest hits collections. But even members of Survivor realize a lot of people might want that song but would never, ever buy a CD of theirs.
In short, record companies strangled to death the singles market -- one of the key ways young people were introduced to music and a great way to break new bands. iTunes singlehandedly revived it and now labels will gross billions of dollars off of sales they had given up for dead just five years ago. Not to mention ring tones, another source of literally $1 billion in sales and counting. Record companies (and movie studios and TV networks) are truly idiots when it comes to exploring new ways of making money.
Here's a short tip: make your stuff easy to buy in any way, shape or form that people want to buy it in. Odious restrictions (like CDs that can't be ripped for playing on an Ipod) are stupid and bad. Got it?
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Of course downloading songs at 99 cents a pop is a great way to revive the single as a valid commercial entity. And just as obviously, if the major labels would put some promotional muscle behind album-oriented acts, people would have a reason to go into record stores again. Instead, we're being spoonfed one ephemeral one-shot after another, and then being told by the labels that nobody likes CDs anymore.
Soupercollider, I almost did an extra post just to mock that idiotic statement. Glad you did it for me.
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