Another factor is the self-inflicted bad value for money rules on CD singles, where you can only have 3 tracks totaling 20 minutes to qualify as a single (as opposed to 4 and 40 minutes). If the record companies deliberately give us worse value for money, of course sales will fall!
<conspiracy mode on> I am not sure if this was the original reason, but could it be that this "rule" was introduced to "force" (read "allow") record companies to share all the mixes over two CDs instead of one, so the willing customer has to buy both of them ? <conspiracy mode off> Outpost Recordings on the other hand, publishing The Crystal Method in the US, released the second part of the single "Murder (You know it's hard)" with seven tracks, which makes a total running time of 53 minutes. The mixes are all very good, and still you pay only a third of the money you would spend on an album with the same running time. Now imagine those mixes were spread over three singles - or four, if they had the idea of shorter "radio" edits of some of the mixes. ($$$) In my opinion, selling more CDs is not a matter of a good copy protection... --- Thomas Touzimsky same shit // different day