As officially reported today by Billboard, Rihanna entered her second week at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 today with her single, "Disturbia". That's impressive for any female singer of the ripe old age of 20, let alone the fact that this is her fourth #1. And her ninth Top 10. In three years. Since that ties her with Mariah and Beyonce for the most #1's of any female in the 21st century, I'd say Rihanna's sitting real pretty right now.
So how about that recording industry she works in? Well, during the 21st Century, while Rihanna's been having a blast, the recording industry has never seen a year where album sales increased. Not once. Since that's the big cash cow (yes, even still today - 99 cent iTunes songs don't cost as much as $18 CD's), that means every record label has had to face a juggernaut of constant erosion, and dropping everyone from employees to musicians.
Hit after the jump to find out why Rihanna is the sign of the album's death knell.
Those darn kids (and their parents. And grandparents) and their iPods, driving the world to a place dominated by singles instead of full albums. It's something that technology has always been behind (remember when the big perk of CD's was that you could skip the crappy songs on an album instead of blindly fast-forward past them?), but with the iPod and downloadable music, the album has become what some consider to be merely the obsolete format for artists to release a package of songs. Now people, instead of having to buy the album filler and skip over it, just don't have to buy the filler anymore. In this age, Rihanna has somehow mastered the art of having huge singles, but never big album sales and yet, she is arguably the biggest female star of the moment.
Want proof? With "Pon de Replay", "S.O.S.", "Umbrella" and this year's "Disturbia" and "Take a Bow", the girl has made a run for Song of the Summer four summers in a row. Tack on her other 5 Top 10's from the past few years, and you have someone who has dominated radios and iPods everywhere. Just not the album chart. Rihanna's highest-selling album of the three since her breakout in 2005 has been Good Girl Gone Bad, which, including the sales from it's re-release this past spring, just hopped over the double-platinum mark at the end of May. So since the highest selling albums of the year still go over quadruple platinum, why isn't Rihanna doing the same?
Because she's not Carrie Underwood. Or Josh Groban. Or Chris Daughtry. The people who seem to buy albums still are fans of the country, adult-contemporary, and rock genres, which have great success still in album sales. Rihanna's demographic isn't interested in buying whole albums anymore (exception to the rule: High School Musical), they just want that catchy song they heard on the radio. And they want it now, so they download it instead of getting a groaning parent to drive them to the nearest Best Buy.
This is all fine and dandy, except that it means that the days of the album are slowly drawing to their close, at least in the format that they're in now. If sales continue to erode, record labels may become less willing to commission an artist for a full album, opting just to work with them on a single instead. And so the album may become that rare treat only granted to those with the success and clout to "justify" one. Because eventually, it won't be just teens downloading songs. It'll take time, but country fans, rockers and soccer moms will follow suit eventually. So what do we do if albums go out the door and they start charging us $4.00 a song?
Simple: Watch the video on Youtube. You can already do that on your iPhone already. Problem solved! (well not really, but everyone love a bandaid) Here's Rihanna in one of her non-Top 10's (just for kicks), with Maroon 5 in the "If I Never See Your Face Again" video, below:
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