Newsweek has way too much sympathy for the clowns who run the music industry - have a look at this:

The industry doesn't want to repeat a history of undervaluing itself. In the days when its business plan was simply to promote and peddle music, it footed the bill for producing videos, and initially was only too happy to give them to MTV to help build buzz. For the Viacom-owned network, the videos drew huge audiences, building MTV into a multibillion-dollar asset. "We watched people make fortunes and create valuable assets off of our music," says a former top exec who feared risking his role, if he were identified by name, as an industry consultant.

Wow, what a self absorbed jerk. Back when music video came out, CD's were selling for prices between $15 and $21. Bear in mind that those dollars were worth more then, too. The CD's cost how much to create? Virtually nothing. How much of that revenue went back to the actual artists? Not a lot. So this executive can go eat a handful of CD's and choke on them for all I care.

And now, the same hacks are upset over their share of the profits from things like iTunes. At present, they get paid 60-70 cents of the 99 cent download price - and they think prices aren't set properly - they want new stuff priced higher. Perhaps they haven't been looking at behavior in the buyer space recently - even at the 99 cent price, lots of people are bypassing the store and ripping music for free. If the execs think that raising prices will solve that problem, they have another think coming. If anything, prices need to drop enough to make that bypassing not worthwhile.