by James W. Coates

Created on: July 09, 2008

Declining CD sales reflect the sad state of popular music, not the rise of MP3's, computers and iPods. While it's true that sales of the beloved CD technology aren't those of 20 years ago, the quality of the music isn't either.

If 45's didn't kill the record, and cassette singles didn't kill the cassette album, where is the logic that MP3's are killing the CD? Just like the internet didn't mean sudden death for books but rather became its companion, MP3's should be considered a compliment to CDs and not a rival. At least until now, digital sales continue to lag behind those of the physical format.

Industry nail biters refuse to acknowledge that music today, as compared to 20, 30 even 40 years ago, has become as disposable as Q-tips. Whereas different physical formats once limited the amount of music an artist could fill, many albums of decades gone by included multiple hits among the track listing. These days CDs have become anemic when it comes to hits, making the CD sick by consequence.

According to Billboard magazine (week of 2008-07-12) the number one song is Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl". While not a bad song, it's hard to imagine this track still getting airplay 20 years from now. Fifteen years ago SWV was on top of the charts with "Weak" but who can recall how that song goes?

Twenty years ago, around the same time the CD format began to catch on, in 1988, the top song was George Michael's "Faith" a song that has proven the test of time and incidentally came from an album that included no less than five top ten hits including several number ones. George Michael may not have the chart power he did back then, but the British pop crooner is currently on a sold out tour of North America.

In 1978, the Bee Gees held two of the top four slots with tracks from their dynamite Saturday Night Fever album, and in 1968 the Beatles were on top with "Hey Jude", a superb track taken from an album that also includes classics such as "Paperback Writer" "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Revolution".

If authors began to write books that only had one good chapter and people had the choice to purchase the whole book or just that chapter, wouldn't it make sense that the majority would buy only the good chapter? Doesn't it therefore also make sense that given the ease of downloading one good song from an album, buying the whole CD becomes an expensive investment?

Record companies should stop looking at the slumping sales as a consumer problem and start concentrating on producing quality product from artists who have career paths that extend beyond one-hit-wonderdom. Who knows, if albums contained less filler and more quality music, maybe people would be interested in investing in a whole CD instead of one song.

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