Surely there was never THAT amount of shit in the record shops on weekly basis?

Course there was. I have extremely refined tastes!

There was always shite to be heard in records shops, but you never managed to look through stuff for two hours and only find two decent tunes.

This digital revolution malarky has a lot of benefits, but the fact somebody who bashes out a shit tune and thinks they're a musical genius can now sell their music without having to go to the trouble of pressing it to vinyl is more of a hinderance than a help.

I miss going to record shops, there is more shit out there because more and more people are producing music and just putting it straight out on download, I agree it takes me ages to sift through to find something I like, but thats half the pleasure.

To say free downloading hasn't really effected the industry is wrong though, there are loads of labels dissapearing because they are making no money. and its surley the little labels the are the foundations of the indusrty in the first place.

"Filesharing is here to stay, luckily the industry has realised that and adapted. Seems the only thing left to change is a minority opinion."

Not sure quite how true that is just yet. The industry's looking more and more like a dinosaur on it's last legs trying to fit old style highstreet shop economics into new style distribution channels.

Throw in all the RIAA/MPAA lawsuits and it's all a bit fucked really..

Something fairly major needs to happen, but it's not going to start until the current top level decision makers get replaced by people with a more modern outlook on these things.. it's just too much of a mental shift for these people.. they can't see past 'shifting units' to the bigger picture.

One interesting idea I saw recently was this story about artists creating a sustainable/good living by cutting out the mainstream distribution channels and fostering a small fanbase of fans.

if a track is available to buy, then i will BUY IT......BUT if for whatever reason it isn't available to buy and i'm really keen to have it then logically i'm gonna try and source it (i often do eventually purchase the track for quality reasons, but not always)... i grew up musically in the 90's having to put up with the likes of Sasha and Oakey playing exclusive tracks giving them the reign of the DJ scene simply by playing what others couldn't get. This pissed me off and being emotionally blackmailed into paying £15+ for promo's for years has left me a little bit bitter. These days a producer trying to hype up a track can have bad consequences because if it's a really big track and everyone wants to play it then the DJ's will just share it between themselves. Now everyone has the same weapons of choice (tunes) it is much much harder to create your own sound when DJing, i wonder if the likes of Sasha and Oakey starting out now on the same playing field would have the same success. Sasha openly admits he had the monoply on tunes and he could no longer have that due to the internet and that's why he up'ed his game and uses Ableton.