This move does not stop students from consuming non-corporate product. Indeed, if they are presently getting corporate product free, and they can’t do so in the future, then this would surely make them more, rather than less, likely to turn to non-corporate product? Most students will surely have some mates who are in a band, and so there will be non-corporate options out there, which will appear more attractive if the corporate products start costing money.

Another obvious point would be the general downturn in the economy over the last decade. Less disposable income = less buying crap. I’m surely not going to spend my meager wages on an album that only has one good song on it anymore (see above).

The record stores have been shuttered true enough. The reason behind them being shuttered is as twisted as a politicians’ line. The reason they are shuttered is that the majors gave the box stores across the nation sweetheart deals for volume that no local record store could hope to match. Local record stores couldn’t even buy theirs for the price the box stores were getting, so how could they sell cheap enough to compete? Going farther, Walmart used those albums for loss leaders, selling them lower than they bought them for to get people in the stores so they might buy something else in addition which would make up the loss. Since Walmart sold albums cheaper than anyone could buy them, that became the accepted price for albums, much to the major labels regret later. Down the road, Walmart told the majors either sell us these albums at what we price them to sell in the stores or we will quit handling your product. As was remarked at the time, Walmart could do without music but major labels couldn’t do without Walmart selling them. Walmart and the other box stores had reached the point of handling better than 80% of the national sales for albums at that point.

Then there is the other reason. Traditionally when the majors have needed an infusion of cash in the past, they changed the format. Within a few years, no one could buy the old media nor the machines to play them with. Each time people would have to repeat buy to update their favorites. Vinyl, 4 track and 8 track tape, cassette, cd, dvd, and now they are wanting blu-ray to be the newest. In the past when vinyl was in it’s heyday, the 45 was the major seller; the single with a B side. They were very carefully picked for the majority to appeal to the largest group of purchasers. When the album came to be as the major lead seller, they had it made. If the group didn’t have enough quality songs, anything would do to fill an album space up. This led to filler which wasn’t worth a hoot and still isn’t. Because this practice of padding the album with lower quality goods became prevalent, people got to where all they wanted was that “one song” and not the rest of the trash that came with it. So they are faced with less income because of that. They got too greedy with the prices for too little. Now with less money to go around, the writers don’t have as much opportunity to get songs on the air. That’s why song writers are out of jobs, not because of the downloader.

It has hurt creativity something fiercely. Used to by with vinyl you had people that could play instruments well as it was their craft, stock, and trade. Now made entertainers can barely tote a tune without mechanical aids in the studio. The day of the concept album, where all the songs were great, tied to one another into a concept, and showed the world the talent of the group, is no longer. What replaces it, is poor fare indeed. The day of the computer picked song based on past hits has resulted in a homogeneous wasteland of blah, resulting in tunes from 30-40 years ago actually showing more talent than what is commonly passed around today as music.

But to hear the music industry tell it, it’s all because of piracy…

[sarcasm on] Right [/sarcasm off]