What’s going in the music industry?  Who has the answers?  Better yet, who has the solutions?

In a nutshell, the music industry is simply following the lead of the US Government, isn’t it?  Let me lay out some comparisons which will show that for the most part, business is simply following standards set by the highest power of the land, our feckless … er, I mean fearless leaders in the US Government. 

After I lay out just a few of the problems I see with the federal government, I’ll make the comparisons I mentioned, and then I’ll try to show where that leaves us music lovers, and what we can do about it.  It would take at least a short book to list all the problems in both government and industry, along with their consequences and proposed solutions, so I’ll leave that for another to tackle. 

In the meantime, I’ll try to summarize and wrap this all up in as few paragraphs as possible.

On the national and international levels, the US dollar is in freefall, the Euro is double the value it was about five years ago, the unemployment statistics look grim, and banks and lenders are in trouble. Homeowners (gasp!) are in trouble, the American auto industry is still putting out Tinker Toys™ (and surprisingly, Americans are still buying them!), and our sixty-year near unquestionable NATO leadership is being (double gasp!!) questioned.  

81% of Americans polled  say we’re on the wrong path (triple gasp!!!)), Shrub’s approval rating is even lower than BJB’s* (fourple gasp!!!!).
*Blow Job Bill

Hell, the music industry is simply following the path that’s been well blazed by Uncle Sam, and is in fine and dandy shape in comparison, isn’t it?  Well, Maybe not.  Let’s put things into perspective: 

1.  So the dollar’s in freefall. BFD, right?  Most Americans don’t travel outside the country anyway, so what’s the difference? 

2.  Pretty soon GM will be offering a fat $100,000 rebate on their cars, so what’s wrong with that? 

3.  NATO?  Phffffttt! 

4.  Presidential ratings?  Double phffffttt! 

Those are important problems, right? But can we, meaning you and me, do anything about any of them?  Nope. 

Ergo, they’re unimportant to this argument for the time being.  Music, however, is of supreme importance!  It’s what gets us through those rough, sometimes hopeless looking day-to-day problems.  So let’s keep our priorities straight.  Can we do without NATO?  Of course.  Foreign travel?  Yep.  Presidential approval?  Why not?  We’ve been doing that without true leadership since Harry “The buck stops here” Truman left office.  What’s one more term? 

But can we do without music?  Gasp, gasp, cough, cough.  As the natives in downtown Milwaukee say, “No way Jose!”

Seriously, the money-jobs-dollar-Prez-car problems are essentially somebody else’s toys. 

As of the latest semi-official US Census, which was July 2007, there are 301,139,947 of us here in the good ol' USofA.  Music is what roughly 301,129, 946 of us need to maintain our sanity while the remaining 10,001 government and industry leaders are busy screwing up the world.