Clay's Single Sales Mentioned in Houston Chronicle Article

We are posting only the Clay part of the long article. To read the full article (a very informative article, BTW), click on the article name.

Music's new sound system
Twenty bucks is steep for a venti coffee, even with a flavor shot.
But throw in a rare, live Bob Dylan recording, and it's a deal.

Singled out
When the Supreme Court ruled this summer that record labels could sue companies such as Grokster, whose software facilitated illegal file-sharing, the labels partied like it was 1999. And that, they'd want you to know, was one of the last great sales years for CDs.

"We know that file sharing began around the same time that our losses began," said Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. Over the past five years, he said, album sales have fallen 20 percent, 7 percent during the first half of 2005.

And, the major labels hope, if illegal file-sharing goes away, their troubles will be over. In 2003, the industry tapped Bainwol, an experienced Capitol Hill lobbyist, in hopes that he could frame Internet piracy as a Washington-worthy topic.

But angry consumers might say that file-sharing is a symptom, not the disease. The underlying problem, it can be argued, is that music now costs too much.

Through the '90s, CD prices climbed and peaked a few cents shy of $19. A Rolling Stone story from October 2004 put the actual manufacturing and packaging cost at 80 cents. The industry justified its massive markup by citing the massive costs of breaking an artist -- the expense of recording, touring and promotions (which, presumably, also include deejay payola of the sort recently investigated by New York's state attorney general).

But $19 is a lot of money -- especially for an album with only one good song, which, too often, was the case. The industry has shown almost no interest in selling singles since the late '80s, when the 45 rpm platter went the way of the iguanodon. But even now, when consumers are offered a chance to buy singles, they do: American Idol stars Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard sold hundreds of thousands of CD singles before the release of their full-length albums.

And, it can be argued, selling singles is key to one of the industry's biggest recent successes: iTunes, which in July topped 500 million song downloads in the U.S.
Associated Press
Death Cab for Cutie gained huge recognition with a guest spot on FOX's The O.C.

Bainwol, and the industry's big players, love iTunes, since they see it as a defense against piracy. "If our option is to sell singles rather than to have them stolen, then we'll sell a track at a time," says Bainwol. "The important thing is to reinstate the concept that this property deserves compensation."

Some in the industry seem eager to scrap their old models. "Whether that's the iPod, the cell phone or a PDA, I don't know, but I think the future of delivery will be digital,"says Andy Gershon, president of V2 Records, an independently-minded imprint of Virgin. "And I believe the faster we kill off the CD, the better we'll be."

But even in a world without piracy, it seems unclear that a flurry of $1 downloads will offset the loss of $18 CDs. If the major labels are to survive, they will have to do more than just offer singles.