How long has the album format been with us anyway? In the mid-'40s, artists were still severely confined in the length of the song because you could only fit a few minutes of music on a 10 or 12-inch 78. Of course, the song is the original popular music format. Stephen Foster didn't sit around thinking about cranking out 12 tunes at once, y'know? People used to buy sheet music and sing along by the piano. From the '60s through the late-'80s, the industry progressively weakened the single as a marketing tool. Maybe in 1981 that made sense -- the margin on a 45 or cassette singles wasn't so hot. I'd guess that a CD single would actually be more profitable (oh...but for the downloading problem). If music went back to the single (or the single downloadable song) as the business model, this would be boon for songwriting -- too often I hear albums where there isn't that one killer song -- the focus seems to be more on filling 40 minutes than the one tune you can't ever get out of your head... Mike Bennett Record reviews and more at http://fufkin.com >From: Stewart Mason > >At 05:52 PM 9/4/2003 -0700, ronald and karen sanchez wrote: > >Singles were the mass marketed items. Now there just is no audience for > >singles, being replaced by downloads. > >Yeah, right. There's an audience for singles. They were DRIVEN to >downloads, because in the '90s the major labels made a conscious decision >to abandon the single as a format. "If the audience wants the song, >they'll cough up $18.98 for the album!" Except the audience didn't. >Instead, they said, "poop on you, major labels, if you don't want me to >spend $2-4 for the one song I want to hear by this artist, I'll just >download it and nobody will get a dime." The phrase "hoist by one's own >petard" comes to mind. _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive larger attachments with Hotmail Extra Storage. http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es