How do album singles work and why are those the only ones that get played on the radio?
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Singles are the song chosen to be given to the radio stations to play. The band and producer will get together and find the “single” of their record and that will be the *only* song they promote. Its mean to be the song that hooks the audience.
When albums were a bigger deal–it was all about the single. You got people hooked on the single, but they had to buy the whole album to get it. So you sold the whole album based off that one song. In fact hell, you could only have that single song on an entire album be any good (and this was seriously a method of doing it for pop)
Oh pop music– so, yes, on say an album of 12 songs, really they only care about 1 or 2. The others are basically throw away. They spend all their effort on just one or two songs that will end up being the singles. In no way am I kidding, if you’re thinking Britney cared about the 8th song on her album, nope, they were just filler–its the single that got you to buy the album and the single they build their marketing around, make a music video for, and so on. It becomes their personality and their calling card.
In a more modern, streaming world– its again all about the single… hell you don’t even need albums anymore.
A single is a song that an artist has chosen to release as promotion for an upcoming album that the single will be featured on. It could also be just a song that didn’t fit on any album or a song they made to tide people over until they start working on their next album/ Ep/ Lp/ whatever.
The single is usually chosen because it is one of the center-pieces of the album: it’s the most catchy, most interesting, most emotional, or whatever adjective you want. Artists pick the song that they think will get the most traction, which is why they get played on the radio all the time. Artists also pay to have the songs played on the radio when they’re first released to, again, create excitement for an upcoming release or just to give the artist some fresh sounds
Not quite…
Singles in pop music started going out of fashion around 1965.
Some artists had only one “good” song. But, there were other artists creating entire albums of great music that fit together.
For example, Sgt. Pepper… there is no “best” song. To truly enjoy the songs on Sgt Pepper, you have to listen to the entire album. Same with Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys.
Music wasn’t as available then as it is now, so the only way to know if an artist had “more to say” was to buy the album.
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