CD Single Sales Now Rising?

Surprises

from the can't-keep-track dept

It was just a few weeks ago that the music industry was claiming that music downloading was killing the market for singles, but the latest numbers show that they’re shipping almost three times as many singles to stores this year than they did last year. Some are suggesting it’s because people are hearing specific songs online, and realizing they only want to buy that song and not the whole album. How does the industry explain this? Like they do with any evidence that suggests music sharing may act to promote music buying: they claim it’s an abnormality. It’s funny how the music industry will use any statistic, no matter how out of context, to make their point that music sharing is destroying them – but they brush aside any evidence to the contrary. Still, if this is the case, then the music industry clearly knew about it last month when they were bemoaning the death of the single. To be honest, I’m even surprised by these numbers, and agree that it may be a one-time bump. However, I’m curious as to why the industry was complaining about the end of singles sales, when the evidence shows the opposite.