What is a "single" anyway??
If you think about it, the concept of a "single" is changing.
We rarely even see physical singles anymore
Any track on an album can be purchased as a single track.
And radio stations have been playing album tracks regularly since the late 60's.
> So a fan requesting a radio station play an album track makes sense to me in 2012.
The still are "non-album singles" -- released as digital tracks but not on any album. Adam had a bunch of them from Idol. Artists often release them between albums, when they are new, unproven artists and for charity promos.
The term "radio single" has become pretty common over the past few years because that is what "a single" has become for many artists. A track promoted to radio by the label/artist.
In digital space (iTunes) there are "lead album singles" -- a song is selected from an album, released for sale before the album as a single track and packaged on its own for distribution to radio stations with the hope that the song will get a great deal of airplay, thereby encouraging people to buy the album when it is released. BTIKM was the Lead Album Single.
Most mysterious to me -- the continued use of "B sides" anymore is even stranger. What is the A side and B side of a digital release? And CD's have only one side???? From wiki...
"A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song (the one that the record producer hopes will receive radio airplay and become a "hit"), while the B-side, or flipside, is a secondary song that often does not appear on the artist's LP." More info here --
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-side_and_B-sideAnd a fun piece of trivia -- Queen release "We Are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You" as one single. We Are the Champions" was the "B Side".
