i think that this article was woefully misguided. not that it's easy to write about something as subjective as music (in the WSJ no less) but i think some key ideas were left out.
first and foremost, the article only discussed the sales of famous, high-volume-selling artists. neither they nor i have the data to verify this, but i would be willing to bet that the distribution of album sales across all bands has flattened out significantly since itunes came about. i like itunes because i can find new artists on it through recommendations, search, podcasts... and if i sample an album's tracks and find it to be all good, i do buy all of it. but otherwise... why should i pay for tracks that i don't want to listen to? if an artist is arguing that the album is designed to be heard as a whole, then by all means, prove it.
secondly, again although it's the WSJ, i don't think it would have been too audacious to admit that perhaps half of those full albums aren't worth buying, and that popular music was going through a bubble thanks to the dominance of cd-based albums as the only medium around. to me, online music piracy emerged as a reaction to this. i imagine that fileswapping services still have a healthy user base, but the emergence of itunes from nothing to the dominant player in 5 years indicates to me that people are willing to pay for music, when they feel like they're actually getting something for their dollar. purely anecdotally, everyone i know who was a one-time "pirate" has switched to itunes/rhapsody. not because we're hugely wealthy, but perhaps because we're discovering more great artists this way, and feel inclined to give them some dollars to help them keep making music.
first and foremost, the article only discussed the sales of famous, high-volume-selling artists. neither they nor i have the data to verify this, but i would be willing to bet that the distribution of album sales across all bands has flattened out significantly since itunes came about. i like itunes because i can find new artists on it through recommendations, search, podcasts... and if i sample an album's tracks and find it to be all good, i do buy all of it. but otherwise... why should i pay for tracks that i don't want to listen to? if an artist is arguing that the album is designed to be heard as a whole, then by all means, prove it.
secondly, again although it's the WSJ, i don't think it would have been too audacious to admit that perhaps half of those full albums aren't worth buying, and that popular music was going through a bubble thanks to the dominance of cd-based albums as the only medium around. to me, online music piracy emerged as a reaction to this. i imagine that fileswapping services still have a healthy user base, but the emergence of itunes from nothing to the dominant player in 5 years indicates to me that people are willing to pay for music, when they feel like they're actually getting something for their dollar. purely anecdotally, everyone i know who was a one-time "pirate" has switched to itunes/rhapsody. not because we're hugely wealthy, but perhaps because we're discovering more great artists this way, and feel inclined to give them some dollars to help them keep making music.