Record companies have weathered storms before, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they figure out a way to turn a profit in this whole mess. However, a victim of the digital age might be the distributors–the middlemen between labels and stores. In the same way a label theoretically signs bands of a certain caliber, a distributor will generally have a certain standard when working with labels. But as the lines between artist and store tighten, who needs the additional middleman? A label can still claim it’s useful–paying for promotion, marketing, tour support and so on. But what can a distributor really offer when the world is all digital and ANYONE can upload music to Amazon.com through CreateSpace or onto iTunes via TuneCore?

Despite the ominous date of 2013, the end of CD’s days may not come so quick. Cassettes stuck around in stores long after CDs became the dominant force in the music biz. I also don’t expect any major label or distributor to go down quietly…no matter what the statistics say.

I’ve encountered this problem with specialty items before. I go to a store and they tell me while they don’t have it, they could order it on the internet for me. What’s the point of going to a store if you still have to wait for two days, go BACK to the store, and so on? Really, I can use the internet for myself…at home…in my underwear!

But this year I’m not purchasing a specialty item, I’m actually looking for something that should be fairly common. I sighed and checked online, fully expecting to pay some insanely high shipping fee. However, even Amazon didn’t have it available! I ordered it from Best Buy for in-store pickup, but received an e-mail shortly after ordering that their inventory had screwed up; it was not actually available at the aforementioned store.

I don’t mean to get on an Andy Rooney style rant here, but remember when stores would actually sell stuff? You could go to a store, find what you were looking for and bring it home. Heck, there’s even a store in New York where you can browse the items sold on a website, but you can’t BUY anything in the store; you have to go to their website. What’s the point of having a physical store at all?

The nice thing about brick and mortar is their immediacy of getting a physical thing. That’s their convenience. The internet has its own list of conveniences. But if stores make it harder and harder to find products, it will drive people to the internet. If the internet is even too difficult (in my example above, Amazon and Best Buy), then people are just going to find a way to steal it.

People talk about dipping sales all the time (especially in the music business), and some have theorized that a large part of this is because the market is saturated with crap. This may be true, but I would add on top of this the fact that when there is a golden gem out there, it’s simply impossible to find.

Oh, and if anyone is curious I did eventually find the gift far out in Queens. Though a Brooklynite making this trek is similar to when the Simpsons went to Ogdenville for a new TV.

Well, I guess my holiday experience could’ve be worse:

Dizzee hits on an obvious point here: that you got to work hard to stay at the top. But with the sinking economy and even worse music sales, “the top” just ain’t what it used to be. Sure, Lil Wayne tore up the charts like no one’s business, but holidays sales are looking dim for recent releases including Dizzee shout-out superstar Kanye West.

Projected hopes for West’s 808s and Heartbreak had expected the album to sell around 800 to 900 thousand in its first week. Ultimately, it ended up selling around half that amount (though still scoring the number one spot on the sales charts), which also way down from first week sales of his previous album. If MC Hammer taught us anything, it’s that even a huge success can be seen by the music industry as a gigantic failure.

However, West has already stated that sales for this album simply aren’t important to him. Though let’s face it, in these economic times, moving 400,000 CDs is huge.

I also can’t help but think that Kanye West might be a little more forward-thinking with his motives. 808s and Heartbreak has a lot more in common with Stevie Wonder than contemporary rappers (except for maybe the use of Auto-Tune). Whereas many flash-in-the-pan rappers have come and gone in the past few decades, Stevie Wonder is here to stay…and he still sells records.

Whether West succeeds in staying relevant thirty years from now remains to be seen, but the first week figures have overshadowed long-term careers in the music industry in recent years. Maybe it’s about time they started investing in some timeless artists.

It seems like the MP3 revolution will make CDs go the way of the 8-track eventually, and people have already questioned why it hasn’t happened already. A quick glance at the economics reveals that the major label system aren’t about to abandon the CD format any time soon.

iTunes business model is pretty easy to evaluate. Albums cost $9.99; iTunes takes a chunk (probably safe to assume around 50 percent); the rest goes to the label. It’s possible there could be some kind of middle man between the label and iTunes as well, but let’s assume the most a label will get will be around five dollars.

Compare this to a CD. At the store, they cost around $14-$20; once again, 50 percent of that will go to the distributor ($7-$10). Half of that will go to the labels ($3.50-$5). On top of that, you have to take out manufacturing costs, which are less than a dollar per CD when you produce enough units, but still lowers profits to between $2.50 and $4.50.

I’m sure we can all tell which number is bigger than the other. Aside from the fact that digital sales account for only around 20 percent of major label’s profits, why haven’t labels pushed for 100 percent digital sales to eliminate that cost of manufacturing and that annoying distributor middle man?

Well, major labels ARE the middle man. Each one controls their own distribution, and even if the individual labels may suffer, the company as a whole can still profit. The cost of manufacturing then becomes almost irrelevant until such a time when sales hit so low that it increases the per CD manufacturing cost.

I’m Canadian and grew up with socialized health care.  After hearing yet another person complain about how they can’t afford health care I realized I have never EVER heard someone who has socialized health care wish they didn’t have it. They’ve never said “I wish I could just find some confusing forms to fill out and pay an ass load of money to someone for a service I’ll rarely use.” I have never heard someone complain about having health care and just wish they had insurance.

I mean, we Canadians know how you talk about us. We know you think we’re your dumb, younger brother with a bad case of ADD who still shits his pants once a week, just emptied an entire jar of pickles into mom’s purse and is now sitting under the coffee table wrapped in tin-foil wiping peanut butter on the dog. But if Canadians can get this health care thing figured out, why the F can’t you?

Let’s face it, the insurance companies are the parasites of the medical industry. They’re the equivalent of the major record label finding a decent band, signing them to a shit contract because they are artists and don’t know business law, forcing them to spend thousands of dollars on recording, touring and making videos which will all be recouped (deductible, anyone?) before a band makes a dime and ultimately get dropped unceremoniously when they no longer meet the standards of the label.

I realize right wing Christians think we’ve only been around this planet for 2000 years or so, but how many people have to die before we realize that we’re all going to? The human body is a disgusting organism. It produces foul odors, leaks, it’s prone to infection and disease, it produces children, ages, breaks when you drop it, falls over accidentally, runs with scissors, creates and uses weapons, becomes addicted, is sleep deprived, spills hot coffee and gets bitten by animals.

Call me a pessimist but there is NEVER going to come a day when human beings are not going to require medical attention. Get it? Health care is not an option like “Should I buy the second pair of Nikes?” It’s as essential to every human life as air, water and food. This country needs a better plan.

Let’s face it. The system is faulty. Its time has come. Do something about it. Make a change. It is your responsibility. Go register to vote.

It sounds like a stoner/laizze-faire approach to tackling the beast, but you know something? They’re right – who cares what some crappy mainstream band like Good Charlotte or Simple Plan (sorry, I’m getting my own frustrations out here) is making, despite the obvious lack of talent. You’ve just gotta let it slide, laugh at it if it helps you, and enjoy the music that YOU like. There’s always going to be Ashlee Simpsons and Daughtrys in the music business, but no one’s forcing you to listen to them, that’s your own sick little secret pleasure.

Think about it, in what other industry (besides sports, which is a whole other beat) do people get so wrapped up in the business side of things that it affects the pleasure they derive from the product? Do you really think I give a shit that Nabisco pays the head baker for Chips Ahoy more money than the head baker for Fig Newtons? No, I just want me some mother fucking delicious Fig Newtons, regardless of whether the packaging manager signs a more lucrative 360 deal with Pepperidge Farm. I guess in the end, all Mudhoney are really saying, in the simplest terms possible, is Enjoy The Music That You Like, and if I could add one thing to that, Unless It’s Bon Jovi or Nickelback, then maybe consider elective deaf surgery.