But all in all, the music industry makes 4 mistakes:
1) Look at the big record labels. What kind of artists did they have some 20-30 yrs ago? Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who, etc. etc. . Those were bands that had time to evolve, to develop and to experiment. And what a result: They set standards, wrote music history and are great to listen to even 30 years after - they created timeless, good music. Or timelessly good music, if you prefer.
However, label bosses admitted in interviews that nowadays bands that would sound like these would get kicked out sooner than you can say the f-word. Anybody know the first Pink Floyd album? N-O-B-O-D-Y of those "big cigar" guys would sign such a band today! They wouldn't stand a chance. It takes some guts to sign music that's not directly to the taste of the broad mass, support a band over some years and, with a bit of luck, be rewarded by having artists under contract that are recognisable because their music has some character and doesn't just blindly obey market rules. And this kind of music tends to be the one that prevails...
Nowadays, 90% of what they sign is musical fast food. Artificial casting marionets, empty masks, soulless and characterless muzak. Who gives a damn about all those casted bands after 5 years? Do you think ppl will enjoy listening to a boy group album in 30 years? Ridiculous!
And then they sell their CDs for prices that make you cry... and I'm lucky enough to live in a country where it's not THAT bad... but still.
2) By "protecting" their CDs more and more, they are getting an increasing number of ppl angry at them because often they can't even play a CD they just bought legally (i.e. too expensive)!
3) Their attempts to offer a P2P alternative are half-baked and uninteresting because
a) they can't come up with something central. They are all mistrusting each other and jealously guarding their profits against others, just like dragons guarding the heap of gold they're sleeping on. Fire up Kazaa or whatever, and you can get ANYTHING, from ANY time and ANY label. Try to use a big label's service and you'll find out that they only have their stuff.
b) they often cripple their download and player software so that you are dependent on it to d/l and play their songs. But if I PAY for a d/l'ed song, I wanna have the fucking right to play it wherever I want and with whatever player / playing device I like!
c) they make songs so expensive that in the end a CD costs just as much as before - the only change being that you don't have a nice CD layout, no booklet, no cover, no lyrics, no nothing. Great!
4) With their current signing policies, they are actively teaching young folk a throwaway mentality towards music. They actively teach them that music is short-lived, trend-dominated sound junk. They hype and market, and then... let me quote the band "Poverty's no Crime": "Someday you find out it's plastic but they made it shine".
No wonder kiddies don't see a value in music and d/l happily away, until they have their HDs filled with more muzak than they'll ever even hear!
Quite interestingly, if you look beyond the major labels, you will find many actice scenes and communities that have a bit of their own infrastructure (mailorders, websites, CD fairs) and somehow manage to sign quality bands, put their music on beautifully laid-out CDs AND sell the whole stuff for reasonable prices, although they KNOW they won't make millions with it. And interestingly enough, both bands and labels involved in such a scene tend to give away free MP3's to people - and survive.
And do you know why I think it works? Because these scenes are less dependent on shorttime trends and give a shit about the charts. This way, they focus on releasing good albums and make people feel that music still has a value. When I see that a band that will NEVER make much money releases a new album on a label that will NEVER become big and rich, I know one thing for sure: They don't do it for the $$$. And since they don't care about fashion and trends, I know that I will enjoy theyr music even many years later.
The result is a rather solid community and a kind of mutual trust: Labels don't spoil theyr CDs with hundreds of copy-protection mechanisms (ruining theyr usability) and the corresponding logos and legal notes (ruining the layout), and most ppl know sooner or later that most of these labels don't sign much bullshit and really buy albums.
Personally, I would buy less if I didn't have the possibility to d/l MP3's. How do I want to check out a band I didn't know so far? By listening to the radio, perhaps? Ridiculous. Radio = 99,9% chart muzak + 0,1 % 80's relicts you have heard so often that they have become a pain.
But if I hear that a band is really good, I want to have the CD - IF I can get it at a reasonable price, and 18 euros for a normal album (cheap 2-page booklet, standard packaging, no lyrics) is NOT a reasonable price. Fortunately, in the styles I like, much attention is payed to the overall appearance of an album, and 90% of them feature nice artwork+packaging (often DigiPak editions with bonus tracks / video clips available), lyrics... everything you want. I have ~400 CDs, and 5 or 6 of these are copies. (Btw, I wouldn't have bought them anyway...)
Phew. I feel better now.