More on the dearth of singles

One dirty trick the record companies use to squeeze money out of customers — I’m really beginning to loathe the term consumer — is to entice you to buy the same album over and over. The Arbiter Online explains how it works:

The dearth of commercially released singles is bad enough for hits that are available on albums, but worse when the version that hits the radio is not the version available on the album. Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera’s hit duet “Nobody Wants to be Lonely,” is not the version on Martin’s album – which features a lackluster solo vocal by Martin. Same with the percussion heavy version of Enya’s “Only Time,” a far cry from the traditional rendering of the song featured on the album. Anyone who wants to purchase the last two hit Jennifer Lopez records will have to shell out another $20 for her latest remix anthology, the R&B versions of her songs popular on the radio are very different from the dance pop versions of those songs on her album.

Remixes, too, are increasingly unavailable to consumers even as expensive maxi-singles. The remixes of Dido’s songs, often better than the originals, though huge hits at clubs, were not released to consumers at all. To get a hold of those, fans would have to buy an expensive reissue of her “No Angel” album featuring a bonus disc of dance mixes. Recently, Mary J. Blige’s latest album was also repressed and re-released with bonus mixes. So much for people who already bought the albums in their original forms.

It’s a clever trick. The costs of creating the original tracks in a re-issue have already been covered, yet the re-issue costs the same as the old album. Money for nothing and chicks for free!

Here’s my favourite line from the article:

I can see buying a whole album by some critic’s darling or classic act, but it’s not as if I’d purchase the $20 Baha Men CD just for “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Woof woof!