[Drippy]

"the average music listener has become angry and they're rebelling.

I don't blame people for rebelling against rip-off music corporations.But I certainly feel artists are entitled to their revenue from their craft.That's why I feel it is unethical to rip even single songs.There are actually small labels still selling singles and EP's.I have quite a few of these and they are fairly inexpensive to produce.And reasonably priced to purchase.Notice how real LP's never became a rip-off to the extent CD's did.They truely sound better as well.

[hunter112]

I certainly feel artists are entitled to their revenue from their craft

I do, too, but the mechanism of that revenue generation may be what changes. Rather than funnel a large amount of money through the front end of the recording industry, with numerous middlemen taking their 'cut', artists might be compensated primarily for live performances. Certainly, the possibility of being able to reach mass audiences through free distribution has given hope to a few artists who have not been sufficiently able to kiss the buns of the muckety-mucks in the recording industry.

All markets go through change, the entertainment industry is one that has seen rapid change within the last 125 years, starting with Edison's phonograph, and accelerating rapidly with broadcast means of dissemination. I'm sure that the music industry had a fit when radio became popular, I remember them having hissy fits when cassette tape recorders became cheap and widespread. Even the use of video tape recorders was legally questionable until the Supreme Court ruled it OK for personal use.

In the beginning, was the live performance by the artist. Oddly enough, technology may be returning us to that form of entertainment as the primary means of compensating a creator of pleasant aesthetic output.