Radio Feedback
The Top 40 of the Music industry once fueled it’s growth by driving more album sales. Now it does the opposite. With the rise of iTunes and other single song sales vectors, the Top 40 gets pushed, while the rest of the album’s songs get neglected. Thus, the obeying public goes out and buys what they are told, however, only via iTunes. They buy it literally, and ignore the rest of the album.
This is due to both poor quality, and low marketing. There is no marketing for the rest of the album, only hope from the industry. Hope that the old model of producing cruddy songs, with a few hits, will still sell. For years they have gotten by on producing the one hit wonder CD. Now they wonder why they are failing?
The recent moves by the Copyright royalty board are only going to further things. Internet radio was the only place where there was enough time and listeners to play all of the rest of the album. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if Congress doesn’t pass the Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060), I strongly suspect that the industry will just fail faster.