Re: hypothesis about poor UK single sales

[Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.edinburgh.ac.uk>]

> From: dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford)
> Date: 8 Oct 1993 21:43:04 GMT

>        For new KaTe material to be so ephemeral in it's chart
> showing indicates to me that either her average fans are not impressed with
> RBG and are not buying the singles or, that many fans are not singles buyers
> anymore, or they are waiting for the album (pardon the poor sentence
> construction).

I bought RBG, but I vurtually never buy singles (even other KT singles).
There are two reasons for this: (1) If I bought a single, it would be
a CD single, and they're about 1/4 to 1/3 the price of the full CD,
(2) given that I'm going to buy the album, singles seldom have
anything extra that I want.

In short, I suspect that CD singles are helping to kill off singles.

In addition, people may be getting annoyed that record companies are
trying to get them to buy extra stuff by delaying an album release
until after 1 or 2 singles have come and gone.

> BTW, it has always shocked me how imports to the UK from the USA are so
> expensive when UK imports to the USA are not too different from what they
> cost in the UK.  VAT doesn't explain it all!  Anyone?

The price of CDs generally in the UK is a scandal.  We're talking
about $US 20 here.

-- jeff