"There was another piece in the Times today about yet another 20 percent drop in CD sales. (Are they running the same news piece every 4 months?) Jeez guys, the writing’s on the wall. How long do the record execs think they’ll have those offices and nice parking spaces? (Well, more than half of all record A&R and other execs are gone already, so there should be plenty of parking space). They, the big 4 or 5, should give the catalogues back to the artists or their heirs as a gesture before they close the office doors, as they sure don’t know how to sell music anymore. (I have Talking Heads stuff on the shelf that I can’t get Warner to release.) The “industry” had a nice 50-year ride, but it’s time to move on. Luckily, music remains more or less unaffected — there is a lot of great music out there. A new model will emerge that includes rather than sues its own customers, that realizes that music is not a product in the sense of being a thing — it’s closer to fashion, in that for music fans it tells them and their friends who they are, what they feel passionately about and to some extent what makes life fun and interesting. It’s about a sense of community — a song ties a whole invisible disparate community together. It’s not about selling the (often) shattered plastic case CDs used to come in."