That's no mean feat. The market may be waking up to the fact that bigger isn't necessarily better, faster isn't necessarily more productive, that the Pentium 4, while hyped by weird blue men in boiler suits, won't actually help you get more work done, write more emails or speed up your surfing through a weedy 56K modem. And, while the Internet may potentially offer a new way of doing business, the only products to actually thrive in the virtual world so far are those that exist in a digital form. One is porn, of course, which makes a good deal of money for those happy to deal in that particular commodity on-line. If Intel will have to get imaginative to evolve, the music business is facing its toughest test to date.
Competitive capitalism is Darwinist in nature.
You have to adapt to survive. And if the music business is the first to fall foul of the Internet revolution, then tough. It makes a change for consumers to get what they want, when they want it, and for virtually nothing. And if the artist can strike a relationship with his audience direct, then fine. We're obviously in favour of cutting out the middleman.