Single Tune Sales: Threat or Boon?

From today's New York Times:

"Tony Brummel, the owner of the independent rock label Victory Records, says he is not interested in selling individual songs from his albums, though he may give them away to build buzz. The label this week captured the No. 3 spot on the chart with the new album from the emo-rock band Hawthorne Heights. The band's CD sold about 114,000 copies — a solid figure for an independent rock band, but somewhat less than expected given the label's shipments of roughly 800,000 copies. A rock album, Mr. Brummel said, 'is a work of art.'

'If you're buying a Picasso,' he continued, 'you can't just buy the upper right-hand corner.'"

I like the quote, but the analogy is flawed--a song is in fact a standalone work of art, though it may combine with others to ideally form a cohesive whole. Even movements of symphonies work as separate pieces.

The article discusses how the song "So Sick" has been a smash R&B hit for singer Ne-Yo, but the label did not release it as a digital download until after his CD "In My Own Words," was available for sale. Perhaps as a result of pent-up demand, he sold 301,000 copies of the album and 120,000 copies of the digital single in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. This result is almost exactly opposite what happened to another radio hit-maker, Chris Brown, who released his song "Run It!" online three months before the CD was out. The online song sold 300,000 copies, and the album sold 154,000 copies in its first week.

The big labels are really struggling over what to do about online vs. CD sales. It's an interesting conundrum. I really like CD packaging--and having put one together, I respect all the work that can and should go into doing it right. But let's be honest--was the crappy plastic jewel case an improvement over the big LP sleeve? Clearly not. Come to think of it, while vinyl (which I can honestly say was before my time, at least as a teen consumer) was big, it was skinny. I'm not convinced that cardboard CD packaging is much better, since I'd rather do the most industry-standard and economical approach, which for radio play means the jewel case. But a musical album can be a thing of beauty. I'm really curious as to what will be next in terms of physical album development. If it gets any smaller, say minidisc size or less, there's not a lot of point to including art with it (though packaging CDs with magazines, books, coloring books, posters, DVDs or devices is one approach being taken to increase the perceived value of the album).

Victrola phonographs revolutionized the music recording business in 1906--will the medium last more than 100 years or will it be replaced by new forms of subscription radio and digital music?