Downloading squeezes the art out of the album: The album, music's dominant creative framework for the past 40 years, is dying under the wheels of an accelerating revolution. [...]
"The chances of restoring growth to the pre-recorded CD business is about as slim as an Apache Indian getting elected pope," says analyst Phil Leigh of research firm Inside Digital Media. "People now have the power to make their own albums. The revolution that's hitting the record business is not just the Internet; it's also the computer itself, especially computers equipped with CD burners. People want to get the songs on their computer, manage a centralized library and organize playlists that suit their individual tastes."
