Album dominance goes way of vinyl

In a way, the pop music industry is back where it began.

In the 1950s and early 1960s the crooners, and later the rockers, saw the hit single, in the form of a 45 rpm record, as the symbol of success. Albums were an afterthought, with a couple of good songs packaged with forgettable tunes and cover material.

Along came The Beatles, followed by the British Invasion and an explosion in musical talent in the latter 1960s driven by the buying power of the baby-boom generation. Consumers came to expect albums to provide quality music from start to finish and the best to build upon a unified concept.

Album sales became the standard to judge recording superstars. So it remained, even as the CD replaced vinyl and new genres competed for attention.

But with the arrival of the digital computer age, the single has re-emerged as the industry's driving force. Full-length album sales plunged from 3.3 billion worldwide in 1996 to 1.3 billion last year, while sales of singles grew from 400,000 to 1.6 billion.

Younger fans have moved to buying singles and streaming music online, forcing the industry to re-evaluate how it measures success.

"The reliance on album sales is very 20th century," Cliff Chenfeld, the owner of an independent label, told The New York Times.

That may be so, but the passing of the album as the dominant recording music art form is lamentable.