10 years ago the recording industry was losing money because of people duplicating CDs and 20 years ago it was because of us all taping vinyl. The bottom line is that the music industry has been in decline since the 70's as more avenues open for everyone's disposable income.

The IFPI can whine all it likes, people will only buy the goods that they can afford to spend on and music is still a relatively expensive disposable income choice - most blockbuster films can be bought when released on DVD for only a pound or two more than a chart album and they seem to get discounted sooner too. The situation also complicated by newspapers and magazines "giving away" "free" albums. That says sends out the message that music is valueless - if it's free on the Daily News why shouldn't it be free on the internet?

Even us artists are starting to realise that we can be better off going it alone than trading our output to the media giants so that they can make a vast profit and pass us scraps. The days of multimillion pound deals ensuring vast profits is gone (look at Robbie Williams recent failures) so why bother? If you can record your songs at home for the price of a computer and the software that often comes free with it then ANY money you make selling them on iTunes or your own website is more profit than you might realise from any record deal.