Singles, Not Albums, Define Music Industry Success

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."

Comments

I'm not worried about this.

[Hott of the World]

I don't like albums. I don't like artists. I like music. Particularly, I like catchy singles. The only reason I don't just listen to the radio for my fix is that I enjoy my music on my terms.

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.