The Wall Street Journal's Ethan Smith and Nick Wingfield have a very good article about some artists' and labels' unhappiness with the weak economic realities of a la carte downloads. In the past, labels would stop shipping CD singles and EPs with a popular song so those sales would not cannibalize album sales. These days, artists from Kid Rock to AC/DC are choosing to offer only an album. For some it's about money (and making more of it). For others, like Radiohead, the songs were meant to be heard as a complete album.

All of this shows not even iTunes, considered by many to be the savior of the music industry, is above consternation. We are in the midst of digital growing pains that will trouble the industry for years to come. In an effort to give consumers more choice, some find the option is not always an equitable one.

If there is any comforting aspect to these pains, it is that they are most often felt by successful, established artists who represent a select group of wealthy musicians. The concern should be more on the side of their labels and managers. And there will be examples of single-driven hits by new pop or R&B artists that don't convert into album sales, and that has been the case for decades. In those cases, deciding whether or not to remove the a la carte option will have artist development implications.

In a sense, labels are showing a bit of pragmatism by selling a title as only an album and not giving consumers the ability to cherry pick tracks. A critic would argue that consumers will be driven to P2P to acquire the songs they want. Such a strategy, however, shows labels are thinking more about profits and less about the murky morality issues that surround digital piracy. That isn't always the case.

The worst quote of the article came from Aram Sinnreich of Radar Research. "This is a last gasp for the album format," he said, adding that most albums are merely a few good songs plus "filler material." Sinnreich may be right about filler content, but I believe he's horribly wrong in his prognostication. In a year of strong sales by Lil Wayne, Coldplay and Hannah Montana -- and a huge increase in LP sales -- one shouldn't dismiss outright the album format. If nothing else, one can look at the numbers provided by Soundscan: At the mid-point of 2008, the rate of growth for digital albums exceeded that of track downloads 34.4% to 27.7%. That's right. Digital albums were faring better digital tracks through the end of June. That's hardly the growth rate of a format suffering through its last gasps.