The Digital Age
The music industry in America is flailing. It isn’t failing yet, but it is having a lot of trouble. CD sales have dropped about 50% since 2000. For example, U2’s new album has sold about 480,000 to put them at number 1 on the charts. But a few years ago, they had to sell 880,000 CDs to hit number one. For one reason, this is just about latent economic fears and fallings-off. But it’s also about digital music and the ability of distributing media through the internet, for free or for a reduced price. Now there are lots of people discussing the issues of digital ownership and fairness of the distribution there. This shifts the blame away from the fact that some of the music might not be good, and so they will be working on contracts that help the industry regain the control over the market.
