Mercury Records abandoning CD and vinyl format for singles

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My first reaction was that I didn't even realize CD singles were still around ... but considering I did buy a bunch of U2 CD singles from NLOTH, I guess that's a lie. :lol:

I just don't ever see them in the stores, just for sale through Amazon and the like. Or as imports.
 
So no more physical U2 singles in the UK then. I assume this will hold true for Universal's other markets.
 
In Australia there is basically no stores that sell singles anymore anyway.

Our largest retailer stopped selling singles in the middle of last year.
 
I used to love buying singles. Bur then they went all tightarse and started coming with just the single and instrumental version of it. Rip off
 
I stopped buying Shuttlecock singles after ATYCLC; I think there was only one legit b-side (Are You Gonna Play Forever?) after that so there didn't seem to be a point.
 
I had pretty much all the HTDAAB ones. WITS was an awesome single.

Tori used to release better singles though, now all the shit ends up on the actual record :laugh:
 
i miss the days before i had internet and just randomly stumbled upon the Popheart single at a Circuit City. :drool:
 
I don't have much to say about that because I have no clue where or when I bought that single but I just felt like 'cockifying it.


Cockhard, naturally.
 
Assuming it's a riff on 'cock tease,' why not just make it Tease?

Or is it more like Bitch, Please!
 
"get down on your knees and please....please....please....eat it out....cuz cock is big....it's bigger.....than us.....but cock is not what you're thinking of?"
 
It's a weird old music format...sort of like a physical version of an MP3 file, but shaped like a record. Sounds insane, I know, but it seemed cool at the time.
That sounds like it'd be hard to go to the exact place in a song you wanted to go to. Did you have to skip through minutes of music by holding a button?

How did people store thousands of 'CDs'???? Think about how much space that must have taken up, and all the boxes to move them from one house to another.

What did people do if they were at a friend's house but wanted to listen to one of their CDs back at their own house? What if you were overseas and wanted to listen to a CD in your collection?

Weird.
 
That sounds like it'd be hard to go to the exact place in a song you wanted to go to. Did you have to skip through minutes of music by holding a button?

How did people store thousands of 'CDs'???? Think about how much space that must have taken up, and all the boxes to move them from one house to another.

What did people do if they were at a friend's house but wanted to listen to one of their CDs back at their own house? What if you were overseas and wanted to listen to a CD in your collection?

Weird.
The nineties were strange times, man.
 
I have thousands sitting behind me right now, it's not a big deal. I'll take physical to shitty rips on horrible sound systems or ear buds any day.

Regardless, that's all besides the point. They're abandoning any sort of physical format for singles, which means the "single" as a format could be dead as far as major labels go. Bye, bye, b-sides.
 
I haven't bought singles on CD for ages. Come to think of it I haven't bought a single in any format for a very long time, but when I want one it's one of those rare occasions I actually visit iTunes. Plus I always found the storage of physical singles a bit annoying - the ratio of songs per square cm as opposed to a proper album doesn't quite justify the almost exact storage space IMO.
 
That's why I wish the mini-single would have caught on outside of Japan.

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I have thousands sitting behind me right now, it's not a big deal. I'll take physical to shitty rips on horrible sound systems or ear buds any day.
Not to dive into digital music formats headfirst and confuse everyone here, but to lay it out for you, the tradeoff isn't between physical, good quality music vs. digital, wishy washy crappy quality at all.

An MP3 encoded at 192 kb/s variable bitrate is almost indistinguishable from CD quality. 320 kb/s and you won't notice any difference.

If you think digital music sounds shitty on decent speakers, you sure stole a hell a lot of 128 kb/s music from Limewire back in the day.

Regardless, that's all besides the point. They're abandoning any sort of physical format for singles, which means the "single" as a format could be dead as far as major labels go. Bye, bye, b-sides.
Quite the opposite. We are back in 1950s/1960s land, where singles are the norm and cohesive LP-style albums are the rarity.

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Digital music, and the mix-and-match ease of the playlist, have created a new world for singles. Look at iTunes. Pricing is now a la carte: you don't buy a shitty Paul McCartney album and get 9 filler tracks and 2 singles...you just buy the 2 singles.
 
Also, I challenge anyone to mount a decent rationale for having physical media back in terms of CDs. CDs were ALWAYS shitty. Cracked, cheap-ass plastic cases, scratches that didn't add character, age, or personality to your copy of an album (they just broke it), tiny album art that may as well have been on postage stamps. Scaled back, tiny liner notes that eventually were reduced to two-sided cardboard wafers or shitty paper.

If you want to get lovey-dovey nostalgic about physical media, then by all means, let's wax nostalgic about records. The warm, crackely sound. The huge canvas for beautiful album art. The personality your personal copy of an LP would develop over time. Only you had a record that sounded exactly like that, due to gradual wear and pops and clicks.

CDs sounded great, but as a physical format they were always shitty.
 
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