I love the Hunter S. Thompson line so often attributed to the Record Industry:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

This week Apple announced that all 10 million songs in itunes will soon be DRM (Digital Rights Management) free. A death sentence for the old model of music distribution.

Appetite for Self-Destruction is a new book by Rolling Stone magazine editor Steve Knopper.

… Should anyone care that in the process, the iPod has all but killed the music industry as we’ve known it? Maybe not, Steve Knopper writes in “Appetite for Self-Destruction,” his stark accounting of the mistakes major record labels have made since the end of the LP era and the arrival of digital music. These dinosaurs, he suggests, are largely responsible for their own demise. …

NY Times – When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won

This quotation has has achieved the status of urban legend. Here’s the original:

… The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. …

Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80’s

Price / music track will drop steadily into the forseeable future.