CD production slowly diminishes to a few small companies, ranking alongside Vinyl producers as a niche market until the expectation is that all product is downloaded.
This period lasts for 5 years.
People then start to complain about the lack of tactile product and a huge growth market in rare CDs starts up.
Okay, maybe I'm being facile, but still..

I haven't bought (or been able to buy) any for years.

Singles were the original form for rock 'n' roll.

Then the 33rpm album came out, but it actually took a good few years for a rock band to treat that 45 minutes ss a reason to create a cohesive statement: For a long time, an album was 2 singles and a load of old toot.

Then the CD came out, and suddenly bands needed 80 minutes to deliver their statement, even though tht was usully 2 singles and an even bigger load of old toot.

Look at hiphop and dance music, self-evidently musics most suited for release in the single medium. There's loads of great hip hop singles, hardly any great hip hop albums. It would be better for the genre if rtists weren't required to deliver in album format and fill them with skits and remixes. Better for the listener, too. Obviously, that's not true of all genres, but there's nothing sacrosanct about pop music being delivered in packages of 12 songs. It's a function of technology, not art.

Remember them? 4 songs on a 45rpm single. Mind you, no one has yet bettered The Beatles' "Twist and Shout" EP: Twist & Shout / A Taste of Honey / Do You Want To Know A Secret / There's A Place. Perfection.

I still reckon that the E.P. is the way to go - either a physical 20 minute cd or an attractively priced 4 track download..

Oh dear... I appear to be repeating myself (see below)

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/less-more-the-single-dead-long-liv...

I'm still reeling from this morning, when I found out that Ikea no longer sell Billy Bookcase "CD insert" shelves.

...that Word will still have a CD stuck to the front cover until the end of time. Some things will never change.