Music notes:
yeah, yeah, universal slashed its prices by a third or so.

so what? its nice, but is it going to save their business model which depends on a concentrated stars system with huge cash outlays for promotion? is it any coincidence that record sales bombed after Britney, NSYNC, etc got big?

A pop system took over, and instead of developing lots of different stars with quality music, they bring in ABBA clones with little talent. Record sales skyrocketed for a few bands, while the overall sales dropped off.

time for low cost promotion of many stars. there is a real possibility that full length cd's could sell for 5 dollars if they stopped spending a zillion dollars on promotion and top execs at the record companies. time for cost cutting, competition of product delivery... they had a long time within an industry with no real competition with the oligarchy of the record industry, basically price fixing.