Everyone who listens to music needs to READ THIS!

[Scootaloo]

17. Yes, you could be wrong

First off, she states she's only paid for 15 CD's. That leaves plenty of room for purchasing albums via Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, etc. That's actually one CD more than me as well - well, if we're talking "bought it from a store at market price," I've bought plenty for a dime apiece at yard sales and such, and have gotten a fair amount as 'swag'

Second, she's running a college radio station. A friend of mine is a DJ on the KoL internet radio station. He tells me his listeners send him several dozen songs every night. More, if it's a "request" show. And he's one of like ten DJ's on this 24-hour radio thing they've got going, and they share internally. A very large portion of it, he tells me, is stuff BY the listeners - remixes, self-promos, obscure stuff from all corners of musical expression - You want an Indonesian folk song concert from the Island of Bali? You won't find it on Amazon, I'll bet, but some tourist recorded it, cleaned it up, digitized it, and sent it to this radio station. The big difference is, the college station probably reaches more listeners, and gets far more swag from the industry.

The truth is CD's are in there with eight-tracks, 45's, and wax cylinders these days. They're obsolete, and the only thing keeping them around is the fact that plenty of CD players remain functional; but when one of those CD players breaks, people don't usually go out to buy a new one, they buy an mp3 player, and maybe a setup to go with it. A CD is just a piece of landfill clutter; since the metal and plastic are so integrated, there's no recycling it, and frankly I have no use for them except popping them into old microwaves for the light show. Seriously, of those 14 CD's I bought at-market, do you know how many I've listened to recently? Not one. Not a single one. I haven't listened to my Stabbing Westward CD since I was fifteen... that was fifteen years ago. It's been sitting in its case, rotting away, for all this time.

If the industry and its artists want to be shackled to CD's, then all I can say is that it sucks for them. Nobody's going to hobble themselves for a business that can't keep up with the market.