If the music industry is making so much money with the status quo then why all the carping and gnashing of teeth over the internet? Why are music industry jobs disappearing and record labels folding? Why are retailers like Tower Records on the verge of bankruptcy? Downloading is part of the problem, sure, but I think the main problem is the asinine business model that the music industry has embraced where the "artist" is mainly just expected to provide good looks and choreography while the industry throws a bunch of money around to provide everything else, desperately hoping for that one big payoff like some sad Las Vegas slot machine addict who is finally down to three quarters, a couple of pennies, some pocket lint, and a stale and slightly beer soaked roll of Sweet Tarts. I'm repeating myself, I know, but it really seems to me that it would be so much more efficient to simply find self-contained talent with long term career potential that all ready has their shit in a bag, are ready and willing to tour like crazy, record them and make the album as cheaply and quickly as possible, spend less money on promotion and then let the chips fall where they may. If the album doesn't sell, then the losses are going to be much less and the albums that do take off are going to hit the profit range that much more quickly. It's an approach that probably has a bit more in common with punk than with prog, but the music industry needs nothing right now so much as it needs a Union Jack painted, steel toed Doc Marten boot upside the head. I think about all the great musical talent that has passed out of this world lately...people like George Harrison, Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon and Elliot Smith...and I wonder who in the heck is going to mourn the passage of Trendyfake, Titney, and Ded Frust forty years hence. CH