tomcy6 et. al.: what the industry doesn't, and cannot accurately measure, is the number of free legal and illegal downloads--i've read guesttimates that these number in the tens of billions annually, which dwarfs cd sales. these free downloads are the exclusive source of music for entire generations, and many bands whose cd releases don't even register on the billboard charts are actually downloaded and circulated in the millions. add this to the fact that, walmart excepted, most of the big bricks-and-mortar cd sources have died (tower, circuit city, virgin, etc.) or on the verge of folding (e.g. barnes & noble) and it doesn't really bode well for future sales of actual, tangible cds. it seems inevitable that very soon conventional cd sales will become the exclusive province of a few big online purveyors and and the odd, tiny hole-in-the-wall local merchants and that downloads will be the overwhelmingly dominant source of music consumption. kinda sad--i'll really miss browsing in record stores.
