Still reading up on 60s pop music of England and America. The old record company rationale for leaving hit singles off of pop albums was based on simple marketing. Since a majority of a band or singer's fans wanted the hit singles and fewer would buy the albums, they figured having all-new material on the album was a nice "thank you" to the even more eager fans, not sticking them with a 33-1/3 dupe of material they already owned as a 45. That eventually changed when many acts no longer focused on hit singles, but even today there are "album versions" of some radio singles. Sometimes those versions are just padded out dance numbers, but now and then add something new.
So everything old is new again. The album isn't dead, but fans have gone back to an older mode of buying and listening to music. The digital download is just the modern equivalent of the 45 (the CD single having been a non-starter). Groups that have high-quality thematic material and particularly eager (or perhaps indulgent) fans still sell albums.
Or at least they'd sell them if fucking pirates didn't rip them off constantly.
1 comment:
They would never get paid anything more for those albums, anyway. Ask Lyle Lovett.
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