Some positive news for a change. Of course it is not from the music industry, it's from a member of the Chicago area content community, a band named Wilco. It seems that Wilco got the boot from Reprise Records for "creative conflicts", this happens of course as there is no desire for innovation at most labels. The Reprise legal dept. went into high gear to dump the band. They succeeded. With nothing to lose, Wilco put their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on the Net for free.

Due to the exposure, they found a fan base and the result is now they have a new label that is not so paranoid about the online community and their last album went gold and placed #8 on Billboard, their highest ranking yet!

You can check out a portion of the interview here and also find a link to the entire Wired article.
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That is very interesting.
I think that no DRM system will survive the next 3 or 4 years. This is only natural. When cds came out about 20 years ago, no one would have thought of making them different shapes. The point was to have one format, one standard. Today we have the chance of having the possibility for several standards and yet have portability.
Not that i like his music much, but i read that George Michael got fed up with the music companies and decided to put his next album on the net for free. I believe there will be more and more artists doing stuff like that. When you think about it, an artist earnbs what, 10% of the revenues generated by his work. With the Net they can easily distribute themselves directly to their fan base and communicate worldwide. This democratisation of music started when home studios got cheap enough for almost anyone to get one. In the end when you look at it, it's funny to see how majors concentrate more and more on their main money makers while at the same time the general movement is actually going towards more diversity. The world of DJ's is funny for that. Common guyz, any age, all sorts of background suddenly letting loose their creativity.
In fact, i just wonder how come music companies still exist