Lifecycle of American™ Music

Vinyl enthusiasts may soon be vindicated... sort of. Today's Washington Post announced the fall of Tower Records, a major icon of American™ mega-music distribution. Tower records, the article claims, is set to close its doors on all locations this December as a result of the decrease in sales and distribution of compact discs. The culprit? You guessed it!.......... mp3's. This article rides on the heels of 2006, Brought to You by You, published in yesterday's New York Times, which discusses how board rooms are manipuating data from "user generated content" [read "us"] to filter through the onslaught of content (much of it crap) to deliver product. Now, much of this is old news for us, but I believe articles such as these merit our attention for they mark a movement, potentially a fleeting moment in time, when the corporate giants are sitting up, taking notice, paying literally billions of dollars to hear our collective cry. The power to influence the next cycle in American music is in our hands...