Popjustice have a neat little article about the fact that most high street retailers have now abandoned stocking singles (that is of the CD variety for old readers).  This situation has been brought on my both technological progress i.e. web, downloads, MP3 etc but as I’ve said the the past also the likes of the BMI who limited the number of tracks for it to qualify in the charts, the cheap option of getting remixes or simply instrumental versions to fill the space and son on.  All very sad, although such a thought according to Popjustice now puts me in the category as vinyl elitists – I suppose my musical snobbery was going to get called out eventually.

So what constitutes a single now?  As popjustice asks, can it be any track on any official download site, how about songs released virally? Should illegal downloads count,?

Will we see seens like this in another 5 years?