Now That's What I Call a Compilation

"If the Now phenomenon tell us anything about changing taste, it may be that collections of songs by a single artist are losing their cachet. (Prior to Now, no non-soundtrack, multiartist compilation had ever topped the Billboard chart.) The album, of course, is the supreme icon of the rock era, and albums' diminished stock may signify a real loosening of rock culture's grip on the public imagination. Or, the success of Now may simply be a response to an era of great hit singles and middling albums. After all, the Now series duplicates what kids do already: They use technology that permits the a la carte poaching of individual tracks from a given album—the so-called 'unbundling' that has record labels freaking out. In the first half of 2006, there were 281 million legitimate downloads of individual tracks and only 14 million complete albums."

Jody Rosen in Slate discusses a rare bright point for the record industry in the iPod era.