However, the Recording industry should be ashamed of itself. First of all, people have been downloading music for years and the Recording Industry did nothing until it was too late to stop it. Now they are suing the fans. The recording industry should have nipped this in the bud when the file sharing first started. I used to tell people during the Napster days that Napster should charge per song. It would be the same as if you go to a juke box and play music. The Artists would get a percentage of the fee. But instead They waited a couple of years. 

Now The artists suffered, the chains suffered, and sadly the consumer suffers too. Because great music stores who all helped shape american music dissappeared. 

So who's fault is it and how to solve it?
Lets start with the Recording industry. As I said before and it's worth saying again!!! Shame on you. Bad, bad way to handle this. If you started slapping lawsuits left and right years ago We wouldn't be in this state today. How to stop it? Well unfortunatly keep suing but not the people the media in which they do this sharing. Ie-Bearshare, Kazaa, etc. HOw hippocritical of me but it's true. But in the mean time, DEVELOP anti copying software that works. And come to a happy medium. Let the consumers download music as long as something is worked out where the artist gets the royalty.

NExt lets go to the consumers-Stop Downloading. For every song you download you take away from not only the artists, but the producers, songwriters and more who helped make the song. Many people's state of mind is that the singer gets the royalties from the song. But it's also the supporting staff. For instance J-z Recently recorded "Hard Knock Life" But did not write it. The song was one of the most highly downloaded song on the net. Because of this the original songwriter saw little money from the song release. That's not fair is it? As A songwriter myself, I know that it doesn't come easy. If I wrote something and didn't get paid for it after all the work from it, I would be pissed too.

How about those music chains-You need to stop riding on the fact that illegal downloads are killing you and make it to your advantage. Chains like Tower should open a CD recording station. Customers who don't have a computer would be able to come to the store, download thier favorite songs and record them to disk. Kind of like a custom Cd. This would have to have the blessing of the Recording industry of course and Royalties would be paid. Also sell music via downloads on your website. 

Lastly I want to mention one other thing that effects the industry. This is making all artists suffer. Back in the late 80's the major industry publication "Billboard" created Soundscan. Soundscan tracks Album ratings on their charts by Album Sales instead of Radio Airplay like it was before Soundscan. This needs to change. We need to go back to the times where when someone requested a song on the Radio, it made it to the charts. 

Hopefully the music industry will change it's ways. But until then, I won't hold my breath.