The Death of a Music Institution: The CD Single

Sunday afternoons from four until seven used to have significance, a significance to the nation. Yet now, the Top 40 chart may as well just be a Top 1 chart. It seems that Radio One may as well cut their losses and just read out, at five to seven, the number one song and have done with it. Why waste time on three hours of music and valuable air space on something that is quite clearly, and very disappointingly, fading away? The single is dying, and music is a worse place for it.

ITunes and the whole downloading market obviously have a lot to do with the demise of the CD single, but that’s for another day. The free single, cue The Subways, Bloc Party, Kings of Leon et al, and going one, two, three, a hundred steps further, Radiohead, is hitting the new, underground bands hard and indeed breaking them rather than breaking them into our consciousness. There really is nothing they can do to compete, maybe release a 5 song EP as a single, spending a lot of their record company’s money, or more likely their own, on something that will undoubtedly be illegally downloaded anyway. Few record companies are really going to facilitate this, and it will take hell of a lot of gigs to pay for this studio time. It really is no wonder so many young, up and coming bands are breaking-up, Alterkicks, Mumm-Ra and Milburn to name but three.

Singles used to have multiple B-sides too. Arguably Oasis’ finest, most consistent album, ‘The Masterplan’, was made up entirely of B-Sides. You could argue this hasn’t changed, take ‘Sawdust’ by The Killers, but why did they decide to release this? Because ‘The Masterplan’ was so damn good and they figured they could replicate it, after a mere two albums, and how wrong they were. Nowadays, the average single will likely include a live version, a remix or an un-thought out “acoustic” version, if that. Merely trading your acoustic guitar for an electric and playing the song exactly the same way does not constitute an “acoustic version”, this just means you have, in fact, picked up the wrong guitar. Most bands are culpable for this. The Enemy, love them or hate them, are one of the few who can plead not guilty to this, as they seem to realise it takes more. Their acoustic version of ‘You’re Not Alone’, really is simply stunning, whilst anyone with Incubus’ superb ‘Make Yourself’ will soon notice they don’t seem to have cottoned on yet with the “acoustic” bonus disc.

One light in this growing black hole is the 7”, which is making a deserved comeback. There are many people, and I know of many, who buy 7”s with no intention of playing them - mainly due to them not having a record player- but still at least they’re buying them. Limited edition vinyls have become the “new” trick by bands now, and it is working, to an extent. Selling them at gigs means you are selling them to people who really want the record, but most importantly want them from the band, and are actually fans. This, instead of a collector who has heard there is a limited press and wants a slice of that soon-to-be expensive pie. So long as the fan is victorious we could still be in with a chance of saving the single.

The production of albums is sure to be cast into doubt next. Ash are already contemplating just releasing songs and no more albums from their own studio, lets just hope they keep this little concept their own, maybe they could patent it, become saviours of music in the truest of senses. Although who would really want to say this about Ash?

Feature by Jack Phillips

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