Can you recall the last CD you bought? Unless you’re either a seriously early adopter or an MP3 evangelist, you’ll probably be able to dredge up that memory. What about the last album you downloaded? Chances are you might be able to remember that too. Okay, so what was the last single you got from iTunes? Maybe trickier?

Granted, I’ll still buy the odd CD, but we’re talking about a handful of artists whose records I’ve always bought – somewhere between a fan’s loyalty and a collector’s prerogative. Do I download full albums? Very rarely. You’d need to be talking about either a pretty esoteric band (which iTunes isn’t always guaranteed to stock) or a download-only release. And I’m not alone. Singles rule the download charts, whole careers etched out through a few million mouse clicks on Apple’s site.

Last year Katy Perry notched up over 2 million downloads of ‘I Kissed a Girl’ on iTunes (no wonder she liked it), but only 282,000 copies of her album. That sort of singles-to-album sales ratio simply never happened pre-iTunes.

Over the past couple of years both the distributors of digital content (read: iTunes) and even artists themselves have found this troubling enough a trend to warrant two very different reactions.

For iTunes this has meant ‘Complete My Album’. Described (by Apple) as “a wonderful new way that iTunes helps customers grow and enjoy their music collections”, this is an additional service made available for six months following the purchase of any individual song/songs from a given album, iTunes offers a discounted rate on the rest of the collection in question. In fact, by mid 2008, ‘Complete My Album’ was said to be responsible for 52% of all album purchases on iTunes, with a 10% conversion rate from single to full work. In response, a number of recording artists have capitalised on this opportunity, digitally releasing tracks in advance of the full album being made available, whilst ensuring that their fanbases are made aware of the facility and the deal iTunes is offering them.

By contrast, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins has publicly stated that the band will only be releasing singles, rather than full albums: “We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest.” Taking this a step further, AC/DC simply refuse to put their music on iTunes, stating “We don’t make singles, we make albums.” Schoolboy error? Given that their last album, ‘Black Ice’ sold over 8 million copies, having debuted at #1 in 29 countries, I’d say they’re fairly switched on.

Guy Garvey, lead singer of Elbow has described downloads, and iTunes in particular, as being “responsible for the death of the album”, although you can most certainly purchase the band’s wares on said site. I guess there’s still something to be said about the age-old quest for albums that are all killer, no filler – but what happens to those records with the songs that used to grow on you? Understanding where a band was, artistically, when they wrote any given piece of music? Do certain tunes always have the same impact in isolation of their creative surrounds?

I mean, other than an executive at Sony, whose favourite album is a ‘Best of…’?

By Jonathan Izzard on July 22nd, 2009

Tags: Default, Digital marketing, Music

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