In reply to jtpop.

I'm not sure this is entirely true. This was around the time Sony stopped supporting Mariah due to her beef with Tommy Matolla. This is why Mariah wanted out of her contract and signed that 80 million deal with Virgin. Truth is, all of the labels stopped releasing commercial singles around 1999 to make people buy the albums for the one song they loved. This ripple effect led to Apple saying "hey u can buy mp3 singles from us" which we now call iTunes.