Singles, Not Albums, Define Music Industry Success 270
athloi writes "Despite the tough times for albums, the music industry is slowly but surely learning the most important lesson of all: give consumers what they want, and they happily open their wallets. Digital music sales are a new business and a new way of thinking about and interacting with content. The industry should be paying closer attention to its meteoric rise and less attention to the dying, arcane album. It should absolutely drop the rhetoric about how piracy is destroying the business, because the sea change in sales patterns shows that something else is is afoot. It means that when users are sitting at a computer and looking for music, more and more each year are turning to legal download services."
I was worried about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Singles exist to catch your attention.. the same way commercials are loud and obnoxious. If there isn't the rest of the album, then the only music will be loud and obnoxious "LISTEN TO ME" stuff. The more subtle music will be sacrificed because it doesn't present well on the radio.
Re:I was worried about this (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm not worried about this. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to by Albums for the Songs. Unfortunately not every song is good. Not every song captures the mood as well as the best one, nor do they capture the same mood. Why am I buying these again?
Some people enjoy the album experience as it is now. Artists, more-so, since most albums aren't done in a single night, nor in the same state of mind. It really lets you explore the different atmospheres that the group goes through when making an album, at least if you don't have it completely remixed and reorganized by some music industry wiz.
It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
It really depends on the artist and style of music.
With some artists, like the Beatles for instance, I like their singles. Their good stuff was really good, but their bad stuff was, well, crap.
However, some artists are much more conducive to an album-type experience. I always kind of hate hearing a Pink Floyd song on the radio. Not that I hate Pink Floyd, they're one of my all-time favorite bands. But pulling a song like Comfortably Numb out of the context of The Wall, Brain Damage out of the context of Dark Side of the Moon, and so on, well, it just doesn't do it justice.
It doesn't just have to be concept albums this applies to. A lot of albums have themes that run through them, even though each song stands pretty well on its own. Fleetwood Mac's Rumors is like that. Sure, each song is great, but all of them together are greater than the sum of their parts.
I think that a HUGE problem (in capital letters!) with the music industry today, aside from treating its customers as extortion victims, is that they don't want to aim for specialized tastes any more. They want everyone just to listen to the same pop crap they forcefeed us all, and if you don't like it, well, don't listen to anything at all. There is no room in their business model for people who like x type of music and other people who like y.
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Re:It depends (Score:5, Interesting)
Like you, I prefer albums (and from the look of your post, the same ones you do), but there are a lot of groups that only ever did one or two decent things (like CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love"), and I only want that particular track.
However, I think that iTunes is much more conducive to album sales than people think, especially for new stuff. I've lost count of the number of times I've only wanted 3 or 4 songs off an album and bought them. Then iTunes says that I can complete the album for four or five dollars and get another 7 or 8 tracks. I'm always falling for that. In the old days if I bought the singles, I would have to pay full price for the album and that would discourage me from buying it. With iTunes plus buying an album is even better value, since the single tracks are more expensive and the albums are still the same price.
At least now we have a few months to decide whether we really want the whole thing.
I don't agree about the specialized tastes thing. It seems to me that music is more fragmented than ever. When I was a teenager people either listened to "rock" music, "pop" music, or "punk" music. Now there are all sorts of genres and subgenres and the record charts don't really have the same meaning that they once had. There probably will never be another phenomenon like the Beatles, where virtually every kid bought the record.
The record companies have also been pretty good at putting out a lot of old stuff with added value. I bought the Deluxe edition of "DIsraeli Gears" the other day, and it is superb value (a ton of extra tracks, radio performances, alternate versions, etc.). God knows how many copies that old record will sell. Not many I suspect, but whoever was responsible for putting that package together did an excellent job. Another good example is the box set of Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin. I didn't pay much for that, but you get the whole show, a book and a DVD of the film they made about it.
So, while not wanting to sound like a shill for the record companies, and acknowledging that they do put out quite a lot of crap and that some new stuff is clearly a ripoff, there is a lot of stuff that they take an extreme amount of care over, which probably doesn't make them much cash, and which is a real bargain for anyone who really likes music.
Re:It depends (Score:4, Insightful)
Change a few words, and it applies to the automobile industry as well, and probably a lot of others. Too many industries have decided that marketing means making the people want what we want to sell, instead of selling what the people want.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
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Odd that you should pick the Beatles as an example. Beatles are usually sighted as THE example of how albums can be more then just a collection of unrelated tunes. The albums that you listed "Dark Side of the Moon".. came later after the beatles had broken the ground and shown what could be done.
The other thing about the Beatles was that they were popular enough t
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I used to by Albums for the Songs. Unfortunately not every song is good. Not every song captures the mood as well as the best one, nor do they capture the same mood. Why am I buying these again?
I totally agree, and would extend this by saying I am sometimes in the mood to listen to a certain style/mood of music.. for example, when I'm just relaxing getting ready to go to bed, I might want to listen to a bunch of slower/quieter songs, and not the album that goes through a whole range of styles.
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There, I fixed that for you.
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Their analysis was that one of several problems that loomed large was that rap is a very single driven genre, and people simply don't have to buy albums anymore. (Th
I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I was worried about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was worried about this (Score:5, Interesting)
High quality artists can continue to create albums. One hit wonders should know their place in the world:
1. Accept the fact that most of their music isn't that good
2. Learn to be grateful that they had one hit song
3. Invest some of the income from their hit single instead of blowing the whole thing on drugs and hookers
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Hm, let me think. Pink Floyd. The Moody Blues. Alan Parsons Project. Emerson Lake and Palmer.
Ok, so I'm showing my age.
But BoberFett has a point.
Mind you,
>> Invest some of the income from their hit single instead of blowing the whole thing on drugs and hookers
is a bit rich. Most bands seem to actually lose money from making albums after the music companies have t
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Modest Mouse, Cake, RadioHead, Chemical brothers, System of a down, The slightly older Uncle Tupelo and the newer Son Volt and Wilco just to name a tiny few that have epic releases of incredible albums. I can name quite a few more if I actually look into the 180 gigs of mp3's or go into the CD vault downstairs. The Crap that is played on the top 40, the Emo-40, the goth-40, and the moody-40 stations are in fact pretty much solid crap without a hope of getting pa
Re:I was worried about this (Score:4, Interesting)
But since my most regular periods of music listening are my 1 hour bicycle trips to and from my office every day, and I listen to music on portable mp3 players, I'd come to like the "shuffle" format for the uncertainty and surprise it brought to my listening.
However, in the past several weeks, I've taken my player off of "shuffle" and have been listening to albums all the way through. It started when someone gave me a few albums that I've really come to enjoy (Apples in Stereo, in case you're interested, and others). So for nearly a month now, all I do is listen to albums all the way through on my way to the office and back home. The Man Who Sold the World, Icky Thump, Coltrane's Ballads, even The Stooges. I'd forgotten just how good great albums can be.
I'm betting the popularity of albums will return as the corporate music industry dries up and blows away and musical artists make more direct contact with their fans through direct marketing of their music via the web.
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Still doesn't beat out tool, thought
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Good writers make good songs. The idea that they should sit on them until they get
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They don't have to have a cohesive story, they don't have to 'be a part' of some larger vision, but they work when played together, and the listener is rewarded from listening to all the tracks on an album, not just the singles.
Really
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So, I don't think anyone was really talking about concept albums in particular (they are, after all, a tiny minority), but I think the point of an album is to be a little more cohesive than you describe. A good album does hang together pretty well, both musically and thematically, and has a sensible progression, even if there is no "story" behind it (doesn't have to be as structured as, let's say, "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Anten
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I like albums too. At the same time I realize that most popular "musicians" don't have the ability to create them
That's because they're, as you have said, "musicians." Generally, they're not artists. They're performers. Granted, there are notable exceptions like Radiohead, Prince, and the like, but for people like Justin Timberlake and Brittney Spears, I refuse to call the latter two "artists" because they have demonstrated no artistic creativity nor ability. Hell, they don't even come up with their own dance routines.
Re:I was worried about this (Score:4, Insightful)
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Save yourself (Score:2)
Save yourself... by not buying any part of a Britney Spears or Ashlee Simpson album!!!
Re:I was worried about this (Score:5, Funny)
Album = 2 singles + padding. Where's the value? (Score:5, Insightful)
Singles are far better value for money (you buy what you want), but are far harder to handle in physical form. Singles on CD etc are a pain for manufacturers (more lower-value titles == more work for less money), record stores (more stock, lower prices,...) and for the listener (changing CDs after each track).
Singles do, however, make a lot of sense in download form. They're easy to manufacture (http) and use (itunes etc) and you only pay for what you want. The people who lose are the labels and record stores since they find it hard to add value any more.
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And the artists. We're heading toward a future where people will have an ipod full of 1000 different artists, one song each. They won't know the name of the artist.. they certainly won't be watching to see what that artist does next.
Why harder for artists? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many artists only produce a few great songs, but they need to generate a whole CD full of crap to record an albumn... that nobody wants. This cycle is driven by the labels.
What is much better for the artists is to generate the good songs that they can, on a budget they can afford. This makes it far easier for them to get published and make some money. It reduces the barrier of entry.
If anything a singles-based industry makes it far easier for more artists to participate and make money.
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To my mind the only thing digital content and the death of the albu
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I might be way in the minority, but I usually won't buy or keep single songs. It gets too hard to find while sorting through my entire music collection. I don't always like playing through my collection, and I don't like sorting through and finding individual songs that I like. If I have 5,000 to 10,000 songs in your collection, each by a different artist and on different albums, it overloads me a little when I try to decide what I want to listen to. It's much easier to decide, "I'm in the mood for some
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I don't see albums going away. This should only make the "album" more worthy. In the past you could just throw together a bunch of songs, and maybe one or two of them were actually worth something. As a consumer this model sucked: you felt 2 songs were worth the money yet if you wanted them, you had to pay up the entire cost of the album.
Now they can't do that anymore. If they want to sell an album, every song on the album better be worth it. The people who will benefit now are the listeners/consumers a
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What this is about is choice, both for the artist and for the consumer. It hopefully means no more albums where there are 3 good songs and the rest are filler. Albums where the whole album is good will remain, but artists will no longer be locked into producing 45 minutes of music in order to be successful and consumers will no longer have to pay for the filler if they do.
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In the Baroque period, aristocratic patrons paid composers to create a soundtrack to various ceremonies: entering a banquet to sit down, going to prayers, or privately performed ballets with the patron and his set as the dancers.
By the end of the 1800s, this had been replaced by a middle class phenomenon: the concert hall performance with paying patrons. Like many middle class practices, there was a hefty element of self-improve
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No, America is merely the best at it. *Everyone* wants to get quick rich.
Its interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well let me tell you something (Score:3, Interesting)
Now why don't they just charge 99p for the CD single? Surely they'd sell loads more!
Back to the Future (Score:5, Insightful)
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But record labels can save the album with a few tweeks in the system, such as lowering the prices on CDs o
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Yeah! What the hell is it with having to listen to all of Die Walküre when I really just want the Ride of the Valkyries? Or having to look at the whole La Gioconda when I only like the smirk?
Come to think of it, where do they get off making me buy the whole song? What if I just want the parts where they go "Heeeyyy... Yaaaaaaa..." or "My lovely lady lumps" and not the rest of the filler garbage? This tyra
Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
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"But I think the music industry has known that for about 50 years."
And, the iTunes store sold their two billionth track in January. Sales of digital singles have been insanely huge for the past seven years or so.
I read the Ars Technica article a few times and I don't really see what its purpose is, other than to try to make the reader feel smarter than the record industry as a collective whole. In short, it's a huge straw man. To quote:
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And, the iTunes store sold their two billionth track in January. Sales of digital singles have been insanely huge for the past seven years or so.
How much of this has to do with the fact that while there is a price benefit to buying a single track off iTunes versus a CD album, there is no benefit to buying an album off iTunes versus buying a CD? I'd buy a single off iTunes (well, only one of the DRM-free ones), but I still wouldn't buy an album when I could get the actual CD for the same price off Amazon.
Let me be the first to say.. (Score:2, Informative)
Self perpetuating business model... (Score:2)
Duh? Why is this even news? Many music groups have one good song, and the rest of the album stinks. Most people that use the usual peer to peer networks download one song, and not entire albums. I perfer legal torrents because you get the album in just one convenient download. But I still perfer to buy my music in LP vinyl format.
The artist gets signed to the label for x number of albums. The band only makes a couple of good songs, so they either put one of each good song on two different albums or both on one and hope they can come up with more good songs for other albums later. The rest of the album they throw together whatever they can to pump out the album so they can meet their contract obligations. People buy (used to, at least..) the albums for the good song or two, for which they have to pay the full album price to get (a
I like albums (Score:5, Insightful)
I like albums and have found time after time that the songs not released as singles are even better. Singles are what you hear for free on the radio and during that one hour on MTV/VH1 when they are actually showing videos. Why pay for what you're likely to hear at any given time. Pay for what you're missing and find like I do that there's so much more good stuff on an album.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
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Go figure (Score:2, Interesting)
A simple analogy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Singles are like trailers for a film. Albums are the film. There's more genius in a Martin Scorsese production than the 30 seconds you'll see during an ad break. Similarly, there's more genius to the average artist's music than is contained in the radio-friendly, appeal-to-everybody-possible tracks that the record company people decide to release as singles.
Personally, I'd favour a means of online pricing that encouraged people to listen to albums rather than just buy the odd single. I doubt it would appeal to many (or even be possible now that people are used to the current online pricing models), but $4 for a single track, $8 for the album would be fine with me.
I hate the idea that instead of a proper record collection, and a real appreciation for music and song as artforms, kids will grow up to have nothing but songs that just the catchy-yet-shallow songs that the radio/MTV happened to be blurting out for the decade or two that they spent growing up.
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Custom Albums (Score:2, Insightful)
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"You'd think the music industry would have smartened up by now and started offering custom albums with a customer's favorite songs burned onto them for a small fee over and above the fees for the songs themselves, making a fair profit from getting the customer keen on having a good-sized collection that *he/she* picked out on-line or at a kiosk, on a decent-quality DVD recordable delivered either at said kiosk or at a local shop which owns specialised equipmentfor that. Not everyone wants to have to do thi
Albums are great (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides that, I've found that if a single prompts me to listen to the corresponding album, I grow to like the entire album (I know many here say that albums only have one or two good songs, and then filler garbage, but I've not found that to be the case at all; no album that I've ever bought has been like that).
I really don't understand those that celebrate the demise of albums.
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(and, no, there is no affiliate link there... just happened to be the first link on Google)
Your hindsight goggles are blurry (Score:2)
Very few albums are works. There will always be a place for them. Now we gert to buy what ever single we want and not get the crap tracks, AND very often you can sample all the songs, so that odd awesome 'b side' song no one plays might also get picked up.
Things have gotten better in that respect.
Now if we can get to a place where artists can just kick out an occasional song to iTunes directly.
Imagin
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Madonna? (Score:2)
One of the greats? Sweet merciful Christ.
At marketing, perhaps. But that doesn't indicate musical talent, sorry.
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Ben Folds - Songs for Silverman
Death Cab - Transatlanticism
White Stripes - White Blood Cells
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
Train - For Me It's You
Semisonic - Feeling Strangely Fine
Ben Kweller - Ben Kweller
Matchbox 20 - Yourself or Someone Like You
etc... I think they're amazing albums, and I listen to them regularly, among others. I think it's easy to judg
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I'd love for albums to still be filled with 15 awesome songs, but that's just not reality anymore.
There are plenty of good albums, not just one good song and rest fillers but not from major labels. Lot of indie/small labels have some great bands who produce entire records with quality songs.
From the top of my head, some recent albums (2006/2007) that are great entirely not just one song:
Loreena McKennit - An Ancient Muse
Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain
Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos
Katatonia - The Great Cold Distance
Liva - De Insulis
Virgin Black - Requiem Mezzo Forte
Mastodon - Blood Mountain
Iron Mai
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albums are just a single or two with whatever drek they can afford to buy for them to record. The few albums that are "complete works" tend to do very poorly. Most people want a the few songs from the artists they like. That is why mix tapes and cds are so popular, no junk.
One of the only labels that got that was K-Tel. They gave the public what they wanted (usually) and none of the junk. And where are they now? Gone. Face it, RIAA,
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Have you heard the other 14 tracks on the last [insert pop sensation here]'s album?
That sort of music doesn't need an album. Period. So albums, for that group of people is going to disappear. Big loss. The next generations Britney Spears doesn't get a record deal, she
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Don't be sad, we'll be mostly seeing pop music products go exclusively to singles for the plain reason this is how they work best (there's not coherence between the tracks in the album, no message, no chapters).
As the labels lose more and more ground under their feet, independents artists will feel more confidence to pick their own music format to offer to their fans.
I see it both ways (Score:2)
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Really good albums are rare -- always have been, and always will be. Those with the talent and desire to compose them will still be able to, and those who cannot will not be compelled to. If anything, pure digital distribution helps to level the playing field so more
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The RIAA has been pushing that line ever since Sgt. Pepper, because that lets them package music in a way that's more convenient to them. All they need to do is find a hit single, wrap it in an album's worth of crap, and sell it for $18. Here's a great article [molanphy.com] on the conflict between selling the single and selling the album. You speak of Sgt. Pepper? Fine. But you ignore the marginalization of whole genres of music as the push for the concept album came to dominate the in
They're still not getting it. (Score:2)
The Fake Steve Blog had the absolute best analogy for the music business and digital delivery and the iTunes Store [blogspot.com]:
Ironically the mistake the major labels made was the same one that IBM made when it gave the DOS franchise to Microsoft nearly 30 years ago. They were faced with a new market that they didn't understand. They had a piece of work that they couldn't do on their own or didn't want to do on their own and they didn't view it as critical or important, so they outsourced it to a partner. The partne
The rise of albums can be linked (Score:5, Informative)
To the rise of FM radio in the mid to late 60s and 70s. FM was "free form" back then, which gave local DJs the ability to program a more varied and deeper set of songs, rather than the same 40 or 50 "hits" mandated by Clear Channel. Even in my early teens years (the 1980s) you could still find local radio stations which played entire albums, usually on a Friday or Saturday night. Now, of course, this is not the case. Listen to a Clear Channel-owned radio station in Minneapolis and one in Atlanta and the only difference will be the ads. No cuts from deeper on a disc, nothing weird or unusual, just the same 40 or 50 songs played over and over.
Obviously There are other factors which influence this. Musical tastes and styles change, as in the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s, the 45 rpm single was king. But I still believe that the conglomeration and corporatization of FM radio has done enormous harm to music. And it's the main reason I haven't listened to terrestrial radio in more than a few brief snatches in several years, as whenever I give it a try I hear the same repetitive song lists over and over. I give my listening time and money to internet radio.
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When I'm bored with my own music, I listen to Radio Paradise. It doesn't play albums, but each small group of songs (usually 3-5) is selected to flow together to the extent that I fairly often don't notice where one ended and the next began.
My point (assuming I have one) is tha
A Number Of Reasons (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Maybe singles are selling because labels are focusing on making good singles (though that is debatable). At the least they are working harder to market them.
3. Singles sell because radio plays the single and nothing else on the album. Radio exposure = sales.
4. CD is the medium of albums and downloaded files are the medium of the single. As music downloads go up, so does the sales of singles.
5. As a correlary, as oulets for CDs sales dry-up, so do sales of CDs (I.E. B&M stores).
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Otherwise it just wouldn't exist... shows would get canceled after one episode if they aren't immediate hits.
...but I only buy albums (Score:2)
This is what consumers want? (Score:2)
I may be wrong here, but I'm thinking that if you can't manage to put out a good album, that single of yours is probably not all that fantastic anyway.
LPs are where the profits are (Score:2)
Singles let the Consumer Decide (Score:2)
Most "albums" of today are simply a bunch of singles strung together. Very few tell a story. Hopefully though, this will inspire artists to create a more cohesive album when they feel so inclined.
A popular artist might be very successful releasing 10-15 singles, all independant of each other... or might decide to tell a story, write an
I'd settle for either... (Score:2, Interesting)
...if I could only find what I'm looking for.
The vast majority of the time, when there is a specific album I want to buy I have to hunt around and around for it.
This happens for the more obscure stuff, but also for some of the more popular artists. Last week I spent WAY too much time looking for the new Björk album.
It reminds me a bit of when I first started using bittorrent. There were no meta-meta torrent search engines, and no massive trackers. You had to look around at a lot of small (and some
the real reason for the Music Industry's slump? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Rihanna "Umbrella"
2) Shop Boyz "Party Like A Rock Star"
3) Fergie "Big Girls Don't Cry"
4) Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah"
5) T-Pain "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')"
6) Maroon 5 "Makes Me Wonder"
7) Avril Lavigne "Girlfriend"
8) Justin Timberlake "Summer Love"
9) Amy Winehouse "Rehab"
10) Fabolous "Make Me Better"
Popular culture panders, film at eleven (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Popular culture panders, film at eleven (Score:5, Insightful)
although not really my taste, Dec. 20, 1969 might do: [salon.com]
No. 1, "Abbey Road," the Beatles
No. 2, "Led Zeppelin II," Led Zeppelin
No. 3, "Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas," Tom Jones
No. 4, "Green River," Creedence Clearwater Revival
No. 5, "Let It Bleed," the Rolling Stones
No. 6, "Santana," Santana
No. 7, "Puzzle People," the Temptations
No. 8, "Blood Sweat & Tears," Blood Sweat & Tears
No. 9, "Crosby, Stills & Nash," Crosby, Stills & Nash
No. 10, "Easy Rider" soundtrack (featuring the Byrds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf)
Meteoric rise? (Score:2)
Meteors don't rise. They fall. "Meteoric rise" refers to something brief and transitory, like the track of a meteor which lasts for but a brief moment before disappearing; if you wish to say that a current seen trend is the way things are going to be for a while, "meteoric" is the opposite of what you should be calling it.
As if the music wasn't bad enough (Score:2)
A lot of groups initial releases wasn't their best material so the groups and the public will be losing the opportunity to hear those songs. Plus it was nice to hear a sampler of what a performer or group could do.
Instead of pushing for singles I would be pushing for more music and videos on CD's.
They tried once before (Score:2)
DJs (Score:3, Informative)
I cant believe success is judged by singles.
Albums are what they measure platinum records in
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