Music singles put the pop in popular music.

Ever since that fateful day when Bill Haley rocked around that clock at 45 revolutions-per-minute, singles provided the pulse of the music industry. The hallowed single -- once a seven-inch vinyl 45-rpm record with a big hole in the middle, later on cassette and then CD -- summed up a summer, a new love, the shedding of an ex.

Spin forward and the music industry, battered by declining sales and an uncertain future, can trace some of its current problems to the near mass murder of the retail single in the '90s. Music fans, faced with the prospect of popping $18 to buy an entire album to get the one or two tracks they really want, opt for snagging songs illegally for free off the Internet.

Singles may have flatlined but -- while no one would accuse the music industry of responding quickly to a problem -- there are signs the single format is struggling back to life.

Digital download singles for 99 cents per song are available on sanctioned sites such as iTunes (from the Apple computer company), Liquid Audio, Pressplay, Rhapsody, Best Buy and Yahoo and others to come in the fall. In March, Fleetwood Mac's online release of Peacekeeper became the first single to enter Billboard's Hot 100 based on download sales alone. Madonna's digital American Life track duplicated the feat a week later. As a result, sales of downloaded singles and albums will now be compiled by SoundScan and included on Billboard's charts.

American Idol's Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, Kid Rock and Cameltoe from novelty newcomers Fannypack can be had on CD-singles at about $5 apiece. DVD-singles, which include videos, are another addition, with titles from Avril Lavigne, Foo Fighters, Whitney Houston and Pink selling for about $8.

Still, there are no retail singles for current Top 10 hits by Beyonc鬠Lil' Kim or Matchbox Twenty.

"There's a rumbling going on right now," confirms Jordan Katz, senior vice president of sales for Arista. "It hasn't reached any critical mass but you can feel the effort happening [among labels]."

"It's like ER," Katz jokes on the phone from his office. "Someone saw [the single] lying on the side of the road and got a heartbeat. Hopefully the patient will thrive again after recovery."

IGNORING MARKET

That's if the once mighty single recovers.

"The [record companies] taught kids not to look for them," worries Geoff Mayfield, Billboard magazine's director of charts and senior analyst.

Mayfield cites an example. Nickelback's office.

"It has been driving me nuts that record companies so willingly walked away from... a meaningful product," he adds. "The single is an important tool that does help teach the young person to become a consumer of music. The precipitous decline of availability may have something to do with the phenomenon of peer-to-peer file copying."

Some illegal downloading and burning to blank CDs would happen anyway, Mayfield allows -- "Free is a difficult price point to compete with" -- but "consumers are not getting what they want the way they want. There has been dissatisfaction experienced by consumers for a decade. There are too many albums that only have one or two good songs on them. Perhaps there's a need for more albums with thought put into the material but there's a market for songs as opposed to collections."

When a single is properly set up and released when an artist is in the public eye, the results can prove impressive.

Mere weeks after winning the title of American Idol on the top-rated TV show, Studdard sold a swift 286,000 copies of his single, Flying Without Wings, and came in at No. 2 on the June 28 Billboard Hot 100.

Aiken, who lost the Idol title to Studdard by a minuscule margin, handily won the retail battle, landing at No. 1 that same week with 393,000 copies for his ballad, Candle in the Wind 1997. John sold 3.4 million copies in a single week with that one.

Curiously, pop radio is not playing Studdard or Aiken to any great degree. Fans are buying their singles anyway and Aiken's upcoming debut album currently ranks No. 1 on Amazon.com's sales list based on pre-orders alone.

"You can't look at the Idols as common for every single -- they had exposure on a top-rated TV show," Mayfield points out. "But you can look at it and see that it can work, can't it?"

INDUSTRY CONCERN

That's why a number of label executives and trade organization the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), led by chairman Glen Ward, will meet in this week to discuss rebirthing the single.

"Singles, only four years ago, sold over 100 million copies. Last year, 10 million were. That's a huge decline," cites Ward, who is also the president and CEO of Virgin.

"As retailers we have the unenviable task to tell our consumers [singles] are not available."

Singles help introduce listeners to a new artist at a minimal initial investment. Back in the day, B-sides -- or the popular euphemism "flip sides," often gave fans -- and the artists -- an unexpected treat. For instance, in 1973 The Spinners' first Top 10 hit, I'll Be Around, was initially the platter's throwaway B-side. Today, CD-singles for artists such as Madonna and Jewel offer bonus remixes of the favored song and land the artists' music into trendy clubs. Often customers will wind up buying the full album once hooked on the artist.

"I used to buy 45s all the time and cassingles. I've always been a record buyer, whether it's an album or a single," says 33-year-old George A. Vazquez, Jr., a media relations specialist with 's PR Newswire. "Very rarely will I download a song and not buy the album. I use downloading as sampling, like you sample ice cream at an ice cream shop."

Makes you wonder why labels sought to stifle singles in the first place.

Owen Sloane, a entertainment lawyer who has represented Elton John, Matchbox Twenty, Suzanne Vega and Jane's Addiction, suggests that cost was a factor. Singles were basically loss-leaders for the labels.

"Singles were never big moneymakers -- they were always looked at as promotional tools for albums," Sloane says on the phone from his office.

To break a mainstream act and land a hit single, Sloane figures it costs about $1 million to $2 million -- not counting the cost to produce a recording.

In the '90s, CD-singles by high-profile pop stars like Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez were priced as low as 49 cents and sold near cash registers like chewing gum. The promotions were designed to artificially ensure a high chart placement on Billboard's Hot 100. That gimmick cost labels a bundle, however, and ultimately wounded the single as a format.

CANNIBALIZATIONThriller 21 years ago. Seven Top 10 singles were released from that nine-track LP. With 26 million copies floating around the , Thriller is the second best-selling album in music history -- two million behind the Eagles' first Greatest Hits album, a collection of 10 previously released singles, no less.

"Worrying about cannibalization is hard to take seriously," Mayfield says. "Album sales are down for three years. The decline isn't as bad this year but an 8 percent decline is still expected. What are we worried about? This is something that is happening anyway. Shouldn't we put something out there people want to buy? Wouldn't that be a weapon in labels' fight against digital media?"

Arista's Katz concedes the cannibalizing fear was unfounded.

"The dwindling availability of singles was because of a fear of cannibalization, but the data doesn't show that to be much of a factor -- if at all a factor," he says. "A little more than a year ago a test was done with Universal and [BMG's] Arista releasing singles titles in , and . We tracked them against album sales and there was virtually no cannibalization at all."

The under-a-buck "aggressive promotions" of the '90s won't happen again either, Katz adds.

The single's future isn't so bright fans will have to wear shades like the band Timbuk 3 once said in a hit single, but it is promising.

"I'm optimistic," Sloane says. "There is still nothing like a piece of music and the memories and associations you've had with music while growing up. The problem is how you adapt to the new technologies and distribution and the majors have been slow and invested in the old system.

"It's happened too slowly to [attract] a whole generation of people that are used to getting their music for nothing. But those people can be brought back and certainly all these other people coming up."

Author: Howard Cohen [hcohen@herald.com]