Downloading so much music right now. if the whole world knew what this was like, we wouldn’t have any CD sales whatsoever. The record companies are so dumb having started this new service with apple  where you buy songs for a dollar each. They make this big announcement in the press like they actually accomplished something—which they didn't. what they did is just waste more of their money The problem is that we are already downloading music for free from kazaa and other sites. Why are we going to go to their site and download for a dollar each? We’re not. Not now. its too late for that. they’re way beyond the technology. especially since I am sure that that other site is filled with all the record companies corporate announcements and cheesy commercials about their mainstream stars. That's the whole reason why people go to the underground is to get away from all that cheesy shit. 

No one wants to see commercials about what Britney thinks of “that kiss.” Or what Justin eats for breakfast or what Jessica Simpson thinks of the two days she broke up with her boyfriend. Its this kind of “paid-for pr about nothing disguised as news” that makes people feel good when they are downloading for free. Right now unfortunately its what America is all about. Fake news. fake food. Fake wars. Even fake presidents now. And any way the people can show their dissent, even if it is subconsciously through little acts of rebelliousness like bypassing the mainstream media to get the media we want, well we’re going to do it. Granted, yes there are people—the kids—who will watch anything you put in front of them, even if its the crap---just look at primetime network television. There will always be an audience for this stuff. but America is growing up fast. very fast. we are evolving at a rapid pace. The rest of the world has already moved beyond a lot of this crap. So no thanks. I've said it before, the solution to declining CD sales in our industry is one, tell the stores to lower the prices to something decent and justifiable. No one goes in your store anymore because no one believes that 17 or 18 dollars is fair to pay. So we buy online the artists that we love or we download for free the artists that we are just interested in. And two, cooperate with the operating system manufactures in our case Microsoft to make all computers come with a block for downloading. And then we just pay by the month depending on how much data we want to download. Its easy. And of course within a month hackers will already be writing hacks to bypass this system but it will be better than what we have now. 

O.k. check this out. This came in while I was writing. some of the first good news we've heard from the suits in a long time. 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, on Wednesday said it will cut list prices on compact discs by as much as 03 percent in an effort to boost sales that have been stymied by free online music-sharing services such as Kazaa. 

Starting in October, Universal, the home to such artists as Mary J. Blige, U2, and Elton John, will trim its prices on most of its CDs to $12.98 from its current $16.98-$18.98 range of prices. 

"Our research shows that the sweet spot is to sell our records below $12.98,' said Universal Music president Zach Horowitz. “ We're confident that when we implement this we will get a dramatic and sustained increase."

Its about time. Eh? This could actually really help things I believe. Its still not going to get me to a record store when I can buy all my music online and get awesome recommendations from music fans all over the world, but its going to get me buying even more than I do now. (which is still too damn much). But it may slow down this increasing addiction I have to downloading music for free. Which really I hope it does. Musicians stealing music off the internet is really cannibalism isn't it?