The music industry doesn't sell music, it sells Image; Napster severs the Image from the music and distributes the music alone. So that the listener judges the material itself on its own merits. This is not in the music industry's business model at all. Music distribution without Image distribution is a big threat to profitability. Without the colorful packaging, the kids can smell the feces. (I hope beyond hope).

Let me add (pretty please? Thanks!) my (probably stolen) "vast wasteland economics" theory; That the reason for all the mediocrity in consumer culture is (was! Culture is Over! The people have spoken) because mediocrity is a sustenable resource.

For business purposes, it is better to produce 40 tons of low mediocrity than to produce 1 ton of inspired genius, for many reasons, not the least of which is that even if the population of the United States was wild about works of inspired genius (which is highly untrue) and plunked down all their money, once the cheering died down, the population would say "do it again! NOW!" and accept nothing less than ambrosia. Unable to get more any time soon, America (sorry, 'the world') would study the earth-shattering cultural product to such an extent that a nation (world, sorry again) of nitpicking unmarketable intellectuals would be the result (Come to think of it, let's start a label with this business plan!). Any actual inspired geniuses that have been captured by corporate culture producers are contractually obligated to idle indefinitely, never to release anything on their own, and to remain on-call to contribute bright little pebbles in the stream of feces.

Although of course, that's a lot like the production model I've been trying as a workaround to perfectionism (well, laziness) being an absolute obstruction to my productivity. Which is why you can find my album series "Maxell CDR 74min" in stores everywhere oh good gravy Thank you for your time.