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Who still buys singles?


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Old 05-10-2013, 12:38
velixa
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As the singles chart is loosing relevance I was wondering if anyone here still buys music singles?

I'm also wondering if they are popular with certain age groups.

I'm in my mid twenties and haven't bought a single in about a year and a half. It's Spotify or YouTube for me. Otherwise I'll get the album for under a fiver at Amazon.

I have a theory that the reason dance music is popular in the charts is because party/club music is the main reason to buy a single. I may be wrong but any thoughts?
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Old 05-10-2013, 13:07
crazybeats
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I still buy them from Amazon and Ebay but that is because Germany is really the only country left that still sells CD singles. Japan do their share of CD singles too mind you. It's a shame people in this country stopped buying physical copies. I remember last Christmas going into HMV and seeing a shelf full of JLS singles at £1.99, Rod Stewarts single at £1.99 and Calvin Harris and others and i remember thinking, why don't people buy these? For £1.99 it's not like it's a lot of money but the shelves looked pretty full. I doubt many had been sold and you think of all those people in there at Christmas buying stuff but a £1.99 CD from those artists,and there was many others, who no doubt appeal to all ages, they don't even make any sales from them. Even as a stocking filler.

Yet people buy from Itunes and Amazon on these m4a and mp3 formats which are highly compressed and they throw money away buying them. I can pretty much google any song in the charts just now and get a free mp3 link for it AND it will be in 320kbps which is the same bitrate those companies use or an equivelant to it. So i'm getting for free what most people pay actual real money for. It's baffling. Mind boggling to me. Buying a single will ALWAYS be, in my mind, buying a physical copy on CD, vinyl or cassette. When you buy online you buy nothing, you buy thin air. It doesn't exist, you can't touch it or store it or lend it. You don't own it.
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Old 05-10-2013, 13:18
kryskrys
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Yeah, I still buy CD singles from my favourite artists, but only if they contain something that I can't get on the album. So for instance B-sides or instrumentals, or non-album singles. I buy them because I like to own everything physically.

I think the only new CD singles I've bought this year are from The Saturdays, because they're about the only act I like who still make B-sides. But I've also bought lots of old CD singles to complete my collections (e.g. from Siobhan Donaghy, Roisin Murphy and Sophie Ellis-Bextor).

I very rarely download singles though. Only if they're not available (or too expensive) to buy physically - like if there's no sign of an album release. Or if they're one of my absolute favourite artists and I can't wait for the album to come out. Or if I love an individual song, but don't care enough about the artist to buy the album.
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Old 05-10-2013, 14:48
CLL Dodge
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Just bought Pet Shop Boys' Love is a Bourgeois Construct CD "single" (it has 9 tracks!).
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Old 05-10-2013, 15:01
Sophie1996
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Im 17 and I rarely buy music but if I do its usually the lead single of an artist that I love, mainly to support them and because I don't want to wait for the album to come out to listen to it. However, I normally just wait for the album to be released. I only buy music off iTunes if its an artist I really really love though, otherwise I just listen to it on youtube.
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Old 05-10-2013, 15:21
ashtray88
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I can't afford to buy loads of albums so I do tend to buy singles or cherry pick songs I like off albums.

I tend to listen to my ipod, so I don't use youtube that much and have never used spotify. I like to listen to music on the go.
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Old 05-10-2013, 15:33
vauxhall1964
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As the singles chart is loosing relevance I was wondering if anyone here still buys music singles?

How is it 'losing relevance'? You are aware that singles sales are at an all time high (higher than even in the late 70s)? Or do you just mean physical singles, sales of which have all but ceased?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...und-again.html
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Old 05-10-2013, 15:53
Sex
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I used to buy singles a lot ... Still do like 2 a week.

I buy albums now.
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Old 06-10-2013, 20:16
crazybeats
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They should bring physical CD singles back to the UK and put them in record stores and HMV.
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Old 06-10-2013, 20:59
zippydoodah
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How much would you charge for a CD Single though to make it value of money compared to an album. I seem to remember singles either being £1.99 or £3.99 in some cases. Some singles use to be part of a 2 CD set if you wanted all the remixes for said artist.
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Old 06-10-2013, 20:59
cnbcwatcher
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I often download singles but sometimes I'll just download them as part of an album or cherry pick songs from certain albums. It depends on the act though and whether the singles have remixes or B-sides or not.
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Old 06-10-2013, 21:40
crazybeats
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The thing with CD singles was you could have up to 20 minutes on them and they were still chart eligable but labels rarely put more than 2 songs on them so i can see why most people stopped buying them. But at £1.99 that is a fair price for say 4 songs.
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Old 06-10-2013, 21:58
zippydoodah
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Don't quote me just in case but I think the changed the rules in the 90s so that a CD single could only be allowed to have 9 minutes of music per CD to make it a fairer playing field when you could have one CD single with 2 tracks on and another with 8 tracks with various remixes etc. This did lead to a CD1 / CD2 of a single though.
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Old 06-10-2013, 23:31
musicjukebox123
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I understand where the original poster is coming from but it's also been a year where three singles from this year have passed the million sales mark and the possibility of more by the end of the year.
So in answer it would seem the singles chart is doing well at the moment.

Personally I just go for albums mainly unless I know the artist is probably going to be a one off purchase but not an album buy for me than I'll buy the single.
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Old 07-10-2013, 02:45
Pointy
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I buy singles from artists who deliver great b-sides/extra tracks as well. I love a great b-sides act.
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Old 07-10-2013, 11:26
DRAGON LANCE
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Yep just to back up the person that pointed out single sales are on the increase, I believe Daft Punk, Robin Thicke & Avicii have all sold over the million mark... and counting. Others are not that far behind. Apparently it is indeed the strongest sales in years and it suggests that people perhaps now find it easier to buy off legal download sites such as itunes than it is pirate songs. Plus you don't run the risk of your download containing a nice extra you weren't expecting such as malware, spyware, etc, doing it legally.

Its actually ALBUM sales that are dying these days sadly.
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Old 07-10-2013, 17:30
Buffalo Man
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Yep just to back up the person that pointed out single sales are on the increase, I believe Daft Punk, Robin Thicke & Avicii have all sold over the million mark... and counting. Others are not that far behind. Apparently it is indeed the strongest sales in years and it suggests that people perhaps now find it easier to buy off legal download sites such as itunes than it is pirate songs. Plus you don't run the risk of your download containing a nice extra you weren't expecting such as malware, spyware, etc, doing it legally.

Its actually ALBUM sales that are dying these days sadly.
To be honest, I'm not keen on downloading music. This probably applies to albums more than singles, but I personally feel that downloading music is soulless. I know I sound like an old fogey (trust me, I'm not) but with CDs and vinyl you had the CD/record, the case, artwork and the liner notes/booklet. With an iTunes download you get the music (a few computer files) and a small picture of the artwork. Oh, and occasionally you get the liner booklet as a PDF which you never get round to accessing, but that seems to be a rare occurrence now. On top of all that the sound quality will never be as good as it is on a CD or a record. In fact, I wonder if the reason album sales are dying is because downloads are so prevalent these days and people can pick and choose what and how many songs they buy, so people just buy a-la-carte instead of the whole package?

However, having typed that, I notice quite a few artists are releasing albums on vinyl again now. Looking on Amazon, the Arctic Monkeys' new album is available on vinyl, as is Paul McCartney's album among many others. I wonder if the reason vinyl's making a resurgence is because the sound quality's better?
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Old 07-10-2013, 18:19
TheTruth1983
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I hate singles. They are overpriced for what they are. At least with albums, you get your money's worth.
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Old 07-10-2013, 18:23
Eric_Blob
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It's true. We're at the all-time peak of single sales right now (there's signs that they might be starting to decrease, so 2012 or 2013 might end up the highest of all-time, as we start to move into the streaming age).

However, whilst sales are at a record high, I think it can still be argued that the singles chart isn't so relevent. Some of the biggest hits this year I've only heard a few times, whilst there's songs I hear everywhere which didn't chart that high.
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Old 07-10-2013, 23:58
CLL Dodge
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Don't quote me just in case but I think the changed the rules in the 90s so that a CD single could only be allowed to have 9 minutes of music per CD to make it a fairer playing field when you could have one CD single with 2 tracks on and another with 8 tracks with various remixes etc. This did lead to a CD1 / CD2 of a single though.
I believe they used to count sales in 3 formats for chart purposes. That may originally have been vinyl (7" or 12"), and compact disc, occasionally cassette single. When CDs became popular record companies issued 2 CDs of a single plus one other format to count for chart placing. They also discounted the price in the week of release so that they would chart higher (then usually drop like a stone).

4 (or more) track CD singles were reclassified as EPs so record companies had to cut the tracks to qualify for singles chart sales.
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Old 08-10-2013, 01:00
mrkite77
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The last single I bought was The Smiths - This Charming Man, back in the 80s. It's the only single I think I own.

I hate singles because for pretty much all my albums, my favorite song on the album is never the one that originally drew me to the album.
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Old 08-10-2013, 01:02
Simon Rodgers
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I'd love to buy them but outlets stocking them are very limited, especially 7 inch ones!
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