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In the record industry, a single is a song, usually extracted from a current or upcoming album and sold as "single" records, bundled with other songs, to promote the album. This practice, however, has lessened as the Internet has made music more readily available to the public free of charge. Once commonly played on radios, the advent of music videos in the 1980s have become a common way of distributing the song to the public.
2. The basic parameters of the music single were established in the late 1800s, when the gramophone record began to supersede phonograph cylinders in commercial music. Because of its inherent technical limitations, the duration of recording available on each side of a 10" diameter standard gramophone disc is limited to around three minutes. These manufacturing limits in turn exerted a direct effect on the composition of music, as songwriters and performers increasingly tailored their output to fit the new medium. The 3-minute single remained the standard into the 1960s when the availability of microgroove recording and improved mastering techniques enabled recording artists to increase the duration of their recordings.
3. The sales of singles are recorded in record charts in most countries in a Top 40 format. These charts are often published in magazines, with numerous television shows and radio programs counting down the list. In order to be eligible for inclusion in the charts, the single must meet the requirements set by the charting company, usually governing the number of songs and the total playing time of the single.
4. Singles have generally been more important to artists who sell to the younger purchasers of music who tend to have more limited financial resources and shorter attention spans. Perhaps the golden age of the single was on "45's" in the 1950s and early 1960s in the early years of rock music. Starting in the mid-1960s, albums become more important, a trend which reached its apex in the development of the concept album.
5. Over the 1980s and 1990s, the single has generally received less and less attention as albums on CDs became the primary method of selling music. As of 2006, the single seems to be undergoing something of a revival. Commercial music download sites reportedly sell mostly single tracks rather than whole albums, and the increase in popularity seems to have rubbed off on physical formats.[1] Portable audio players, which make it extremely easy to load and play songs from many different artists, are claimed to be a major factor behind this trend. A related development has been the popularity of mobile phone ringtones based on pop singles. more... at Wikipedia
