Downloads Make Singles a Hit Again

By 2002, so few individual hits were being released commercially that the National Association of Recording Merchandisers launched a "Save the Single" campaign. But it didn't help -- at least not that year: In 2002, singles accounted for less than 7 percent of music sales, with only 12.2 million singles sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Billboard reported that it was "believed to be the lowest number since the single was in its infancy in the early 1950s."

The emergence of Apple's iPod as a mass-market phenomenon -- and the opening of Apple's online iTunes Music Store in 2003 -- reversed the trend, as music fans were suddenly empowered to buy individual songs, whether hit singles or not.

That's how three songs from the soundtrack to the Disney Channel movie "High School Musical" wound up in the iTunes Top 10 last week.

"The huge difference between the digital marketplace and the heyday of the retail-available single is that you never had this many a la carte choices," says Billboard's Mayfield. "There weren't nearly as many songs to choose from. Now, when an album comes to the market, you can buy any of the songs individually."

Says Adam Klein, executive vice president of strategy and business development for EMI Music: "Putting control back in the hands of the consumers is always a good marketing proposition."

In this Wild West of a marketplace, artists need to work harder on producing quality music, says talent manager Michael "Blue" Williams.

"I have to ask my artists to make better records," he says. "I need at least four singles. We lost a lot of fans over the years because we gave people average albums, with one or two singles and the rest of the album was trash."

Williams is not, however, having that conversation with his top act, OutKast. The hip-hop duo's 2003 album, "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," sold 5.6 million copies, won the Grammy for album of the year and spawned two best-selling digital singles in "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move."

Williams is confident that the next OutKast album, expected this spring, will do similarly well. "They take pride in putting together a complete project, a great album," Williams says. "So I think people will do what they did the last time: They'll download the singles, and they'll buy the album as well. I don't have a problem with people paying $13.99 for the album after downloading three or four songs for 99 cents each."