Singles Might Save the Music Industry

By ERIC FELTEN
WSJ

The music business has been wringing its hands over the dramatically decreasing ka-ching of the cash register. There may not be agreement on the exact magnitude of the industry's collapse—cataclysm or mere catastrophe?—but one main cause is clear: the humble "single."

Until digital downloads came along, to get a copy of the one hit tune found on a given album, you had to buy the whole CD, a technology that effectively killed off the old 45 rpm vinyl single. But now, in the age of iTunes, the single is back from the brink of extinction. Instead of making a purchase north of $15, consumers can get the one song they want, unbundled, for a dollar, more or less. Revenues, not surprisingly, are down.

Lady Gaga is likely to sell far more copies of the individual digital track "Born This Way" than she will copies of the CD. And she's hardly the only artist embracing the single, which is quickly becoming the main way people purchase music. And while the switch may be an immediate disaster for the recording industry's bottom line, it just might be the best thing to happen, musically, to a business grown stale and stagnant.

For starters, we may finally escape the singles/album bifurcation that played into the tyranny of teenybop pop for decades. Singles, being cheaper, were purchased disproportionately by the adenoidal set. Because the Top 40 was based in large part on the sale of singles, the gauge of popularity was skewed heavily toward adolescent tastes. But before the LP came along in the late '40s, the record business was all about singles, and teens didn't have a total monopoly on buying them. The pre-LP era was one of astonishing musical creativity: The last time singles were the uncontested format for delivering recorded music, Count Basie, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman were popular artists. We should be so lucky.

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