NYT reports that music sales declined very substantially and that this fact may portend serious problems for the music industry. Makes sense to me. For some time there have been many silly suggestions from music download enthusiasts that downloading was not going to cut into profits and that revenue alternatives to traditional music sales would present themselves eventually. Of course they won’t, but it’s all good. The music industry is driven by superficial mass appeal and good riddance to it. Thanks to abundant downloading venues, cheap production, and the rise of online promotion tools like Myspace we’ll hopefully see people democratically decide who are the best bands and which deserve their support. Let the people drive music consumerism for a change rather than media moguls.