No Rock And Roll Fun

NOTHING ABOUT THE MUSIC BUSINESS ADDS UP: Another email, this one from Graham S.:

On reading the Guardian Review charts page today I learn that Now 57 would have been the biggest selling album this week, but is ineligible for the chart. So then, Mr Record Label blames the drop in single sales on all the kids who are DLing or getting the ringtone (yeah right). Yet somehow a compilation of all these singles (which everyone presumably already now owns thanks to Kazaa) is outselling all the other album chart drivvel.
 
It just doesn't make sense...

Hmm, and, of course, compilation albums have been doing so well for so long, they had to ban them from the charts because it's not just the Now franchise, but for years everything from New Woman's All Woman W-O-M-A-N album to the second Trainspotting Album has been outstripping sales of 'proper' albums. It is curious, isn't it? But surely the record companies wouldn't have been the architects of their own destruction, would they? It can only be coincidence that the tanking in US single sales came at the same time as America belatedly imported the Now Thats What I Call Music masterplan back in 1998, can't it?