Via Fark.Com…  The 20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups Of All Time…

From turning down the Beatles to stomping Napster – the most ill-advised, foolhardy and downright idiotic decisions ever made by The Man.

I particularly liked this one, because I lived through it, and it was when I began to hate the record companies…

#19 The industry kills the single—and begins its own slow demise
In the early ’80s, the music industry began to phase out vinyl singles in favor of cassettes and later, CDs. Then, since it costs the same to manufacture a CD single as a full album, they ditched the format almost altogether. But they forgot that singles were how fans got into the music-buying habit before they had enough money to spend on albums. The end result? Kids who expect music for free. “Greed to force consumers to buy an album [resulted] in the loss of an entire generation of record consumers,” says Billboard charts expert Joel Whitburn. “People who could only afford to buy their favorite hit of the week were told it wasn’t available as a single. Instead, they stopped going to record shops and turned their attention to illegally downloading songs.”
Unintended consequence The Eagles still top the album charts.

This was such a brain dead marketing decision that when I saw them start doing it I didn’t believe it.  Suddenly the singles racks started getting smaller and smaller and you never saw anything new in them.  Worse, now if you wanted a single you had to buy it on cassette, which wouldn’t have been so bad except the quality of pre-recorded cassettes was dismal.  And I saw all this happening and thought, Oh no…they Can’t be serious…  But…they were.

Imagine the soda companies deciding to get rid of all their vending machines and making you buy a six pack every time you wanted a Coke or Pepsi.  Now further imagine that instead of six packs of Coca-Cola, say, they made you buy a six pack of five drinks you didn’t really like all that much, just to get the Coke you really wanted.  You think their sales would go up?  No…they’d go straight into the gutter.  And there they’d stay, because an entire generation of kids would grow up drinking something else besides soda, and when they got older and got jobs and could afford the six packs, they still wouldn’t buy them, even if the soda companies started offering them as singles again.

When I was a kid I lived on a small allowance, and then a series of minimum wage jobs.  This was back when the minimum wage was like $1.75.  Yes…I flipped burgers.  Lots of them.  I also delivered tons of those advertising fliers that you hate finding on your door knob when you get home from work.  And I bought lots of singles.  Buying the 45 rpm version of a song I really liked was a no-brainer, even if I had very little money that week.

I still have them too… 

That’s two "Disc-Go" carrying cases full of 45s, and some nice Beatles tunes there on the kitchen table that, alas, you can’t legally get online.  The one I’ve got in my hand is Revolution (that’s my camera’s electronic shutter release in the other hand).  The pre-Apple, Capital Records one is Eleanor Rigby, which I actually bought for the A side tune Yellow Submarine.   Eleanor seems to get more play these days for some reason.  Actually, my all time favorite cover of that song is the one Ray Charles did, and I can’t get a digital copy of that one either, though I was able to find a YouTube post of Ray singing it in concert and it’s very close. 

Happily, most of my favorite old 45s are out there for me on iTunes or Amazon.  It was discovering that I could get nice clean digital copies of many of my scratched up old favorites that got me into the market for digital music to start with.  Prior to that I’d just been ripping from my existing CD collection.  The night I discovered I could buy new copies of my old 45s I think I blew like about 40 bucks on iTunes.  They make it so easy.  If I could legally get digital copies of these Beatles tunes they’d all be on my iPod right now.  Supposedly that’s going to happen soon.

The record companies should be kissing Steve Jobs’ ass.  I have bought more music in the past year then I’ve bought in the previous decade and two things they’ve tried hard to kill are responsible for that: digital music downloads and Satellite Radio.  Now, via a friend, I’ve discovered the Internet Radio service Pandora and it is just amazing.  On Pandora I can specify an artist or a song I really like and the web site will serve me up a steady stream of music that is like that.  I could listen for hours.  I have several Pandora channels set up already for my favorite swing music, rock, light jazz, New Age and classical.  And if I hear something I like, there’s a ready link I can click to get it from either iTunes or Amazon.  I always check Amazon first because their downloads are all DRM free MP3s.

If the record companies don’t manage to kill Internet Radio, I’ll have another stream of music I can enjoy to listen too, and hear something new, or something old, that I might want to suddenly buy.  And as long as I can easily buy the single online for under a buck, I probably will.  Like, right then and there.  Immediately.  Do they really want to stop me from doing that?  Apparently…