"Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder would never get a record deal.... they're blind"

It didn't snow. I fussed ALL DAY about the snow and... nothing. I don't know why, but I really wanted it to snow!

SO I tried rowing yesterday. Apparently, it's supposed to be this huge calorie burner, but I didn't break much of a sweat. I'm sure I'm doing it wrong.

So I'm going to see this documentary on Friday night at the library in Boulder (patchoulie, anyone?) It's called "Before The Music Dies". It's a study of how ginormously fucked up the music industry has become. This is one of those topics where I just have so much to say, but I have no idea where to start. The beginning of the trailer pretty much sums up my frustrations. It shows two girs who look around 15. They have never heard of Bob Dylan. The would tell Ashlee Simpson that she's "real". And it's not really all about music. It's interesting to see people get ridiculously excited over a song that was essentially chosen for them. We listen to what some old fat guy in a label boardroom tells us to listen to. There are 5 major labels. You can look at the back of a CD and see something other than one of those names, but it is almost certainly owned and controlled by one of those labels.

Another thing to consider is the backlash that has been caused by digital music. I believe in the protection of copyrighted work and while it may be cheap for you to rip off someone's work, it is not necessarily right. BUT, it has woken up these labels. We have been horribly overcharged for music for a very long time. The $15+ you pay for a CD? You now know that making your own costs a mere fraction of that. In that $15 you are not paying for some plastic and fancy cover art. You are buying the marketing of that album. You essentially paid for Ashlee Simpson's nose job, not her singing lessons.

Well, that's changing. The labels have come to realize that while we won't pay $15 for a CD with maybe one good song, we will pay $65 to see a decent live performance (something they've been shafting for a looooong time). And we will most definitely pay $15 for 15 songs that we can compile ourselves with the click of a mouse. Consider this:

-overall album sales DROPPED 7.2 percent from 2004

-it was the first time in the soundscan era ('91) that a BILLION units of music were consumed. This included 352 million downloads. Never before has any single configuration (45's, CD's, tapes) sold so many in a year

.-16.2 million units of digital albums (not singles), a 190 percent increase over 2004. Interestingly, only 48 albums went platinum (that's half from 2003).

But the trailer is good. And Dave's in it.... http://www.beforethemusicdies.com/