Death of the single, continued...

no.

no of course not. but is that downloads of proper singles releases, or single downloaded songs? ie album tracks, and stuff thats not going anywhere near the charts.

At the swedish music industry seminar 'Access All Areas' in November last year Peter Jenner (Former Pink Floyd manager and manager of Billy Bragg) said that the most important thing new bands and artists can do is to build a community.
To that I would add that over the entire two days of industry seminars the single most discussed issues were ipods and downloading.

It astonished me to even hear the heads of even independent labels (the larger english ones in fact) wasting their breath on subjects like the indies negotiating their distibrution deal with itunes. Why should I go to the itunes website?Why can't I feed my ipod from the rough trade website instead?

No one actually talked about music.
Why am I surpised?

Because these subjects ar OLD. They were obsessing about downloading now when all of this new industry comes directly from the result of one 18 year old in his dads garage playing on the computer and making his own website (Napster)

So that was 5 years ago - what are the 18 year olds doing now? They are forming bands that are going to get their music to people in ways not even yet dreamt of.
With or without the aid of the music industry I might add.

How about every band having a website where you can download tunes to your mobile/mp3/watch/dv3player and have it charged like a call on your phone bill.

Could happen

So what then for the single?

Well, the single and accompanying video will go back to being more of an advert for an album or for an artist in general. Frankly most artists make more off the broadcast royalties (if they are the songwriter etc.) for a single than they do off the mechanical royalties (the actual physical CDs).

So?

Well, if all goes good, the quality of the single and video package should increase as revenue is recouped through dvd sales. Surely the DVsingle is next but that will be downloadable at some point too.

IF it goes good depends on the artists themselves making sure they understand a little about the industry and its nefarious trap doors. For this they need good managers. And a good manager is one that can step around the industry as well as cut in to it.

Your manager should know this - despite all the fuss about downloading, the sales of CD ALBUMS in the UK in 2004 was the highest ever.

Rock on!

lets all go back to vinyl

The idea of a single has been as a loss leader to promote the album for twenty odd years, especially when it comes to smaller bands. Say today you sell 20,000 singles, and you'll chart for sure, perhaps even top ten, and maybe you'll make, say £40k at £2 per single, but this is nothing when you compare that the video alone will likely cost £20-250k, let alone the recording and promotion cost. Videos. in particular have been subject to incredible inflation. A friend of mine has just done a couple for Keane, and was saying that 25 grand video is considered 'done on the cheap' these days. 10 years ago 'done on the cheap' would have cost sub-£10,000. I'm not saying this is a good thing, and in fact I would like to get to a situation where pop videos are not treated as some great cash cow by the film industry, but as long as you have major labels spending video budgets like Chelsea, that's the way it will continue.

Album sales are up, and so are takings from live performances.

If there is to be any future in the single format it needs to be competitive with the price of downloads (like £1) and include the video as an MPEG, since what is the point in making a video if it is lost in the archives of MTV (or worse, the mailroom). The only reason to but a single as opposed to a download is because of the package, because you have some interest in the actual physical product.

However... this is much more to do with mainstream pop/rock than the alternative world. Alternative/Indie/Metal/Whatever fans are more likely to want to buy a physical copy of a record of a band they are devoted to and more likely to be completist about bands, owning all of their records.

I only sell vinyl 7" singles on my record label website (www.theespc.com - blatant plug).

They do actually sell, 'cos yeah some indie-kids are wierdo obsessives who NEED the physical product (I know I am).

Actually the free downloadable versions of the songs on the 7" singles seem to help sell them, which is the reverse of this argument. Granted, this is an anomaly.

One day we'll all have music beamed directly into our heads via brain-interface-chips. iBICs I shall call 'em and make billions.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The chart organisers are to blame. Once upon a time I could buy a single with four tracks (sometimes even more). Then they placed the three track, 20 minute limit to 'take the pressure off artists'... whilst allowing the 2CD format which means that artists have to have more B sides, not less. Now one of the CDs has to have one extra track, not two. Every 'improvement' only serves to rip us off more, and I stopped buying them

I've only got so much room and so much money. CD singles used to be worth it if you liked the artist, even if you had the album. Now I've got to buy a track I already have TWICE just to get everything and pay TWICE as much... for the same amount of stuff I used to get on a single CD.

I apologise for the fact that this all looks very boring when written down, but it certainly explains why I buy less singles now and I know I'm not the only one.

Hurrah! Less profits for HMV and Woolworths! Less money to distributors! Less cash for artwork! No more inflated prices for three tracks!

If they can come up with a way of combating piracy of downloaded tracks (ie. if you downlaod it, you can't copy it to someone else) and the prices are reasonable then good. Music should be a live event and it's clear that the birth of downloadable music has heralded a real revival in live music as something that is important, perhaps more important than the poxy video for the single.

What really would shake up the music industry would be a change of mind that stopped all the fragrant wasting of cash on singles, money being pumped into live music and self-sufficiency for bands to record and release.

go and stand in the corner and think about what you've done...

Hmm, this puts a positive spin on things - downloads are better as there is less worth attached to the cd itself, and more worth attached to the musical content. Great - people are buying music, not cds. So why, pray tell, will the creators of that music see very little of the profits made on this "simple business"? If the music itself is becoming more importnat, why the hell should the paper-pushing chairman of fucking BMG or whatever reap the benefits when he probably lacks any kind of creative talent whatsoever?
This is the problem I have with this whole issue - downloads are great, but if I'm going to pay for them and only have less space on my computer's memory to show for it, I don't see why any of the money I fork out should go to anyone but the artist and those directly involved in the production. The fellows who expend effort and time to bring us music should be rewarded, that is the underlying principle of copyright law and yet it is thwarted everyday by record companies who a) coerce artists to sign away many of their basic rights in relation to the music they produce and b) and insult to injury by paying them pittance for the privilege.
Rah rah rah bloody rah!

There is something dark and wrong with legal downloads. Stop it now.

Singles are on albums. Therefore, people don't buy singles anymore. If they weren't on albums (as it was in the past), more people would buy singles.

Wooh.