1 Madonna? Lionel Richie?? Bruce Springsteen??? What decade is this?!

2 Let's see - Wasteland, Leisure Suit Larry, SimCity - yep, it's the eighties again, only with faster computers and thinner monitors.

Be thankful.  It could have been the seventies.

3 Given gas prices, unemployment, and inflation (the way it used to be calculated),  I rather thought it was.

4 I only buy at Amazon, because it's DRM-free. Experimented with iTunes a few years ago when I received an iPod in present, and figured it wasn't for me.

5 I think Apple began out-selling Columbia records a three or four years ago.

Don't know the date for sure.

6 It's not really surprising.  For as ubiquitous as music is in our society & culture, the actual industry is tiny.  Buying up every major catalog/company would cost between 4 to 5 billion.  There's a reason people have thrown the idea out for Google or Apple to just buy the entire music industry.

There's also a reason why a shift to Live music is where the artists make their money.  Records are just for promotion.

7 Interestingly, I'm told that radio is still what makes money for the songwriters behind most pop musicians. Their royalty for broadcasts earns them more than their live performance royalty.

8 Anyone who's running an Internet radio can tell that royalties are pretty heavy.

9 From news that was posted last week, the music industry has actually experienced its first annual increase in revenue in 2011 after seven years of decline, because of the growth in online music sales, both full albums and single song downloads.  Last year also saw the first time annual CD sales increased since 2004.

10 Now that it's in electronic format, and I can do what I want with it, listen to it where and on what I want to, I am buying music again for the first time in about ten years.  Usually from Amazon.  I think the last CD I bought was ELO's Greatest Hits.  Early 00's?

Not only can the convenience not be beaten, the selection is insane.  Yesterday I decided for some reason that I wanted to hear the main theme to a 1968 film again.  19 million songs.  "Huh, well maybe they've got mine, then," I thought.  Not only did they have it, they had multiple versions of it. 

Beat that with a stick, will ya?  Or in a store. I can't recall the last time I even saw a shop that had CD's as a major component of the floor space.   

11 Best Buy still does. In unrelated news, Best Buy is in serious trouble.