A few recording artists have taken to blaming iTunes for the decline of album sales in recent years. While online music sales continue to rise, overall album sales as well as CD sales in general have steadily dwindled.

One of these artists is Kid Rock, whose latest album "Rock 'n' Roll Jesus" has sold 1.7 million copies since June. Rock's manager, Ken Levitan, told the Wall Street Journal that had they gone the iTunes route, most of the sales would show up as 99 cent downloads of the song "All Summer Long".

"In so many ways it's turned our business back into a singles business," said Levitan. Selling a lot of singles do not necessarily equate into a bigger revenue than selling fewer albums.

While it can be said that most music albums these days just have one or two good songs and a lot of crappy filler tracks, how are we to know if the songs that never got airplay are indeed crappy or not if we don't  try listening to them? This was also a point of contention for the artists, who worry that listeners may never even sample enough material from an album to form an informed opinion.

And what if artists do stop going with the iTunes model? They always run the risk of losing profit because of consumers who would rather turn to other, less legal means of getting a song that's not available for download as a single. It's a bit of a conundrum. What do you guys think?

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