The death of the single and how it brought us to today

When I was 6 I saved up 4 tokens cut out from Wheetabix packets, sent them off, allowed 28 days for delivery and received "Come on Eileen" By Dexy's Midnight Runners as part of their Top Trax promotion.  This was the undoubtedly the beginning of something that would be massive in my life.  My room as a child growing up in South Wales was full of two things, He-man toys and tapes.  Everywhere you looked there was tapes, making that oh so very distinctive sound as you shifted another box to have them rattling around next to each other and then in one corner that was neater than the other, the 7" vinyls.

My pocket money went pretty much on two things from that point onwards, singles from Woolworths (I wasn't allowed in the record shop, it was full of bikers smoking roll ups and drinking strongbow) and then whatever change was left over went in the Street Fighter 2 machine in the corner.

Then in the mid 90's the weirdest thing happened.  I couldn't buy singles any more.  Slowly but surely the selection I had to choose between went away.  What had been rows of Vinyls and cassingles in my childhood, became the cd's (and microdisks, minidisks, dats......briefly) of just the top 20, soon after just the top 10.  Then albums, compilation albums and official film soundtracks.  Next to the pick and mix and the other stuff they try and sell you whilst you queue to pay.

The reasoning was simple.  Singles cost too much money to make and didn't generate enough profit per unit sold.  So out was the £4 single with the song you wanted, a remix and two b-sides and in came the age of the 2 good tracks, 10 fillers £15 album.  How many people bought OMC's album purely because "How Bizarre" was on there?  and more importantly can they name any other track from there?

"The Industry was looking for excuses to get out of it.  You had these arguments that singles were cannibalizing album sales.  So they killed the single"  - Jim Caparro (former president of Island Def Jam)

So they did, problem solved.

Terry McManus wrote the following in billboard magazine in 1997

"When [the record industry] stopped making vinyl singles and offered nothing to replace them, the industry stopped a whole generation from picking up the record-buying habit"

But surely that doesn't matter? There is no need for people to sample the product, to test it and see if they like it if they have to buy the whole thing surely?

McManus continues:

"...if you think about water that's trying to reach the surface it comes up in one place and you plug it up.  And you go, 'OK, that's plugged up, my water problem is finished.'  It's still seeking a way to rise to the surface."

A year later in 1998 Shawn and his Uncle John Fanning unleashed Napster on an unsuspecting world, something that McManus refers to as "the revenge of the single".

This morning we in the UK are preparing for a world which includes the Digital Economy Bill.  The British Phonographic society can breath a big sigh of relief that it has successfully criminalised it's customers and the £200 million it is currently "loosing to piracy" is bound to come flooding in any day now but in essence what have they done?

The trouble is, when you block and fight with your most creative citizens from doing something they love they will inevitably find a creative solution to that problem.  The revenge of Peer to Peer is coming, I wonder what it will be.

Home tapeing party anyone?