The Recorded Music Industry's Decade Of Hell

I really have to respect people who decide to launch themselves into the music industry as there isn't even a real music industry anymore. There is more of a music related industry, in which clothing lines, concerts, endorsements and centerfolds make up for the revenue lost from selling music. The last decade has decimated the recording music industry:

Since 1999, when the file-sharing website Napster appeared, global sales of recorded music have collapsed from $27.3 billion to $15.9 billion. Yet according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an industry body, the habit of buying music has persisted in some countries. Last year the Japanese and British spent the most on music, as a proportion of GDP. Spending held up fairly well in Sweden, chief redoubt of Spotify, a legal music-streaming service. It was much lower in Italy and Spain, where piracy is entrenched. The weakest markets were in emerging Asia. China, the world’s second-biggest economy, is not even in the top 20 for music sales. There, music is copied as enthusiastically as handbags.

It's a similar song to that being sang by journalists, writers and other creators of information and entertainment (though musicians haven't asked for subsidization or bailouts, interestingly) who have been  mind fucked by the arrival of the entertainment and its breaking up of monopolies of information. The old rules of the game are out the window and whatever will replace it is far from clearly defined.