Today marks the 50th anniversary (July 6, 1957) of Paul McCartney meeting John Lennon in a church fete (fair) in Liverpool to form the core partnership that would become The Beatles. In 2007, there has been no "official" Beatles release or related material, but the world still looks on and music fans still buy up products by and related to the four members. Last month, Paul McCartney's 21st solo album Memory Almost Full debuted at #3 in the Billboard 200, while the collected works of the George Harrison supergroup Traveling Wilburys debuted at #9. Meanwhile, the John Lennon-fueled, various contemporary artists-filled Instant Karma compilation designed to aid Darfur debuted at #15.

While these numbers may be impressive for the products of the former Beatles more than 37 years after the band broke up, the music industry slowly and loudly falls apart in self-defeating decline. Luckily, we do not (and frankly cannot) look to The Beatles to save the industry. It's likely the band could not anyhow, despite the potential sales the digital catalog that may one day see light of day might pull in. With the uncertainty of that release on the horizon, all that is left now is the current state of the music industry, but it is not unlike the music industry that The Beatles entered. True, the early 1960s were not a state of decline, but when The Beatles started, the emphasis was not on albums. It was on singles. Is there any difference in the digital tracks that see higher downloads than albums? There might be, but fundamentally there is not.

If The Beatles catalog is ever released it will likely sell the same way many albums today sell. Yes, fans will buy the newest remastered versions from digital stores and relish in the joy of buying a Beatles album in a new way for the first time (akin to 1987's CD versions?), but new listeners (and maybe even some fans) will buy up their favorite tracks, destroying the core albums in the same way that albums are not bought today. Everyone says the album is dying, but in the industry it may never have been meant to be.

The Police's Synchronicity. U2's Achtung Baby. Duran Duran's Rio. Nirvana's Nevermind. Hanson's Middle of Nowhere. Behold, in no particular order, my top-five album list (yes, I am perfectly serious about Hanson: pure pop perfection). This list has changed somewhat throughout the years, as the musical landscape and my personal tastes evolved. Now, all of these names are fairly dusty -- the newest one (Hanson) is already 10 years old, if you can believe it -- but it looks as though new contenders for the list may be harder to find in the future.

An article in today's New York Times business section details the music-industry trend away from the full album, which "only true fans" are now perceived to buy. Hearkening back to the days of 45s, but with a decidedly digital spin, artists and record label managers have acknowledged the increasing significance of the single. In 2006, according to Nielsen SoundScan, digital singles outsold tangible compact discs for the first time; so far in 2007, the digital-song business has spiked 54% to nearly 190 million tunes sold. While digital album sales are also on the rise, single sales are trumping full-album sales by a margin of 19 to 1. And overall album sales are down 16%. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is largely credited with this changing tide, of course, along with hundreds of blogs and MySpace pages offering downloadable singles. (MySpace is a division of News. Corp (NYSE: NWS)).