State of the Music Industry

State of the Music Industry
How can the music industry rebound from the drastic slope of record sales? If you look at it, the music industry actually has reverted back to somewhere near 1980. Why do I say this? I recently was watching a show on TV One that was based on the life of the late recording artist Phylis Hyman. In one part of the show they were talking about one of her albums in the 70's selling around 450,000 copies. At that time, they were praising these sales. That's not even a gold record, but pretty good. You have to think, most artist weren't selling more than 500,000 copies up until Michael Jackson came out with "Off The Wall" in 1979. Record sales really didn't start exploding until music videos really came on the scene!! When MTV came out, record sales went off the chart. Record companies started making extraordinary money. So, between 1980-2005 was probably the music industries best years. Then came Napster and file sharing. Why buy the music when you can get it for free on the internet?? This is the mind frame of most people. Who would have ever thought Janet and Michael Jackson would have a hard time going platinum. Most big artist with big recording contractsare having a hard time even going gold. This is why you see a lot of your favorite artist starting their own labels and reaping most of the profits because it is so hard to sell big numbers even with a major label. Why give up 80% of your artist royalties to a major label, when you can put out your own music through cd's and download and keep most of the profits? Let me know how you feel!