I’m not talking about downloads. I’m talking about a physical product with one or two songs on it. Do they even sell those anymore?
I myself haven’t bought one since the cassette era and remember that even then they were kind of pricey ($3 or $4 for a cassette). Unless you don’t have Internet access, I can’t understand why you would buy a physical single when they can just purchase a song for $1.29 or so on iTunes.
I don’t even think they have them anymore. The last time I recall seeing a cd single was in Tower Records 5-7 years ago.
I’ve seen a few as giveaway items but have not seen one for sale in many years. I have not looked for them either so I could have missed them.
I don’t think I’ve seen singles for new songs in at least a decade. It wouldn’t surprise me if some get created for promotional purposes – though, even then, what format? Relatively few people have turntables anymore, and I’d be willing to bet that many young people (who are the primary buyers of popular music) don’t have cassette players anymore. So, maybe CDs?
Seems like the MP3 killed the single.
I buy 7" vinyl fairly often. Brand new, usually from touring punk/oi/ska bands that come through town. Common in that scene.
Interesting. I’ve known that vinyl is still out there, as a niche medium. Good to hear that it’s still being produced, at least by some.
I don’t know about the old 7" style vinyl singles, but they are definitely very much still being sold in CD form. A couple of examples:
As you can see, not only are they selling singles, but in this case, they have two different versions of the same single, that only differ by the “b-sides”.
Most of the CD singles I’ve found are imports, though. However, I did happen across a 12" single that appears to be domestic:
When they stopped including 4 tracks on a CD single I stopped buying them. 2 songs just wasn’t worth it. I can’t recall exactly when the change occurred, sometime in the mid-1990’s I would guess. I do buy the odd EP nowadays though which usually have 4-6 tracks.
I miss the old CD singles on mini-CDs. Those were badass.
Now almost all singles are released on regular-size CDs, and it’s just a bunch of wasted space.
Isn’t it the opposite?
Mr. Athena and I were just talking about this last night. When I was a wee Goddess, I could buy singles. 45s man! So cool!
Then CDs came out, and singles more or less disappeared. Yes, there were CD singles, but they never were ubiquitous like 45s were.
Now we’re in the era of mp3s, where once again, you can buy a single song, it’s cheap, and they’re ubiquitous. If only you had to buy a little plastic adapter to put in the middle so your turntable would play them…
I’ve heard people speak of these ‘singles’, but never appreciated what they were. Don’t you feel old now?
I miss those “records” you would get in magazines. Vinyl inserts, that would come with Mad Magazine, and such. Does anyone else remember those?
I can still sing much of “Super Spectacular Day”, one of the Mad Magazine insert records, some 30 years after I had it and last heard it. And yes, I can still remember the lyrics to several of the random endings to the song as well.
A year or two ago I noticed around christmas you could buy singles of the latest Pop Idol/X Factor/American Idol winners and some other really poppy singles that I imagine people would buy for young kids or for the elderly. I would have to check to see if such a section still exists in my local record stores.
They are still released and are still fairly important in Britain but are dying fast, due to both the digital single and the stupidness of record companies putting only 1 or 2 tracks on the CD. I still buy them when an act I like releases them because I love the format and collect CDs, but I almost always buy online because if stores still stocked them here in Australia I’d probably be the only one buying them.
When they eventually do die out completely it will be the fault of the record companies refusing to make their product desirable - there is a huge market and demand among serious music fans for remix singles, yet the actual CD single that gets released usually contains just the song and instrumental version, which is useless. The remixes that people are willing to shell out money for often end up exclusively on radio and DJ promos, never to be released commercially.
The situation basically sucks.
Exactly, multimediac17, when I was buying singles regularly I used to love getting the odd remixes, or live versions or whatever, that weren’t on the band’s albums.
At first I thought the newest ones I had were from 2000, No Doubt and 6Gig, but then I remembered I have one around here somewhere from Razorlight and their first cd didn’t come out until 2004.
Thinking of singles makes me wish that there were more single-song downloads out there for sale. If anyone ever sees “Armchair Advocate” by Rocktopus, let me know please. I’m not interested in paying $10 plus shipping for a cd when it’s the only song of theirs I liked.
From memory:
It’s a great big beautiful, wonderful incredible super spectacular day
And your heart is humming with good times coming
And you’ve got a happy feeling things are going your way
All the bells are ringing and a little bird singing as he sits on your windowsill
Saying "Yessirree,
I can plainly see
It’ll surely be
Most definitely
A super spectacular day
Until…
I recently got 23 Rolling Stones CD singles, but I had to buy them in a box together to do it. On the other hand, they are black, with grooves, and the jackets mimic that of the original 45s.
Last time I bought one was for remixes of Madonna’s Beautiful Stranger on CD. Which I was surprised to find because I had thought singles were an artifact of the days of vinyl. I pretty much buy exclusively online now.
I reject your assertion that it doesn’t count though. I agree, buying a single song off an album doesn’t count. However, there do exist albums on iTunes that are just one or a few songs. There’s even examples of artists releasing a new popular single online by itself before the actual full album comes out.