[wendroid]

FTFA "So the money that used to flow through the music business has slowed to a trickle"

I'd like to call that a "mis-speak"

"The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales." [1]

Which makes music sales of US$18 billion for 2008 by contrast the revenue for the top 20 countries in 2005 was $12b [2]

"PRS for Music, the organisation representing songwriters, composers and music publishers, today published new research showing that UK music industry revenues totalled £3.63bn in 2008, up 4.7% from 2007’s £3.46bn." [3]

Some fucking trickle

[1] http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_resources/dmr2009.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Statistics

[3] http://www.prsformusic.com/aboutus/press/latestpressreleases...

[josefresco]

Not saying this is authoritative but your numbers don't jive too well with this Wikipedia quote:

"In the 21st century, consumers spent far less money on recorded music than they had in 1990s, in all formats. Total revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads in the U.S. dropped from a high of $14.6 billion in 1999 to $10.4 billion in 2008. The downward trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future—Forrester Research predicts that by 2013, revenues will reach as low as $9.2 billion.[5] This dramatic decline in revenue has caused large scale layoffs inside the industry, driven music retailers out of business (such as Tower Records) and forced record companies, record producers, studios, recording engineers and musicians to seek new business models.[6]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#2000s

[viraptor]

Both posts can be true. "music business" is not only about record sales. It's also about ads, gigs, licensing, etc. Even if direct sales are lower, the business itself can be alive and well. It's only the amount of money spent by customers that went down.

[steveklabnik]

To be fair, I bet the money that flows down to them has slowed to a trickle.

[discolemonade]

Yeah, but digital sales aren't replacing CD sales. They probably never will. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if the labels didn't mind becoming smaller entities. The thing they haven't yet realized is that the industry is breaking up into many different niche entities of which they're now only a small part. It sucks losing power they way they have but complaining that the digital music revolution is unfair is like saying that gravity is unfair.It's a non-starter.