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Record Labels Struggle With the Album's Demise
Supplying yet more evidence, if more were needed, of the dire straits the music business increasingly finds itself in — reader cphilo sends us a NYTimes article about the death of the album as the mainstay of profit, and the record labels' struggle to adopt to the new realities. The article notes the trend of the labels signing artists for a single song, maybe two, and a ring tone.
You must be even younger. There once was this thing called "Long Playing Records"... Big round black things with a label in the middle?
One of the major reasons that singles used to play the big role in the recorded music industry was that was all you could record on a record. 78 rpm records ruled the land for a good many years holding, at best, a few minutes of recording per side (and they didn't always have two sides).
The development of the LP and its greater storage capacity was what allowed more than a single tune per side, and that's when the album concept took off. Albums used to be a collection of single discrete records before that (and is where "album" comes from). When faced with how to distribute singles, 45's were born. They were a lot smaller than the old 78's, using "denser" recording methods like the LPs to make a much smaller record with a single song on each side.
You kids today with your CDs and computery things and MP-whatzitmajiggers... And get off my lawn!