I read this article with malicious glee. For a while now, I have pissed and moaned to anyone who can tolerate it that mainstream music has become seriously boring, that most radio stinks now and that it's criminal how much you have to pay to go see someone people have heard of. It makes perfect sense to me that the music industry has just pushed consumers too far, shoving less-than-mediocre pap down their throats and making them pay through the nose for it. People are tired of it, and by God, they're hitting the mainstream music industry where it hurts. At last.

However, the article left me wondering whether people have cut back on album purchases and concerts, or just gone through other avenues to buy them -- avenues that SoundScan and Ticketmaster aren't picking up. For example, while I've been complaining to all my friends, I've been going to all kinds of concerts -- for less than $10 -- by foreign artists (and here let me heartily recommend Thomas Mapfumo from Zimbabwe, and Los Amigos Invisibles from Venezuela) and as often as not buying CDs either from the artists directly or ordering them through their labels. Do industry monitors account for such sales? It would be interesting to know if people are unable to buy music, just tired of buying the same old stuff or whether -- perhaps -- more people are turning to cheaper music and hearing all kinds of things they may not have heard otherwise. When Giants Stadium is empty, it's possible that the free concert in the park is packed to the treetops.

-- Brian Slattery

Why are CD sales down? It might be a combination of layoffs and the demise of Napster. For someone without a job, it's a bigger risk to buy a CD without trying it first.

-- Amita Guha

Is it really surprising that the music industry is declining? They offer an inferior product at a ridiculously inflated price, and expect the consumer not to notice. The decline in album sales has nothing to do with a flagging economy. It has everything to do with the labels' habit of signing mediocre, middle-of-the-road bands and forcing them to produce mediocre, middle-of-the-road albums.

-- Peter Gordon

Music today, as presented by MTV and the radio, sucks. Finding good music today takes a lot of time and effort. A group like Portishead would get next to no air time today, while badly sung drivel from the latest blond Britney clone would spew endlessly out of the TV and corporate radio.

I hope the record companies crash and go bankrupt, allowing a brief period of good music to slip into the media before the tasteless bean counters take over yet again.

I love music, and I haven't bought a new CD in six months. My friends and I view all non-NPR radio channels as a wasteland. When the radio resumes playing music with some character and MTV and VH1 remember how to play music again, perhaps we will spend our money on music once again.

-- Stephen Cumblidge

So the music industry does everything they can to screw their customers, shutting down Napster, gouging us on tickets and forcing crap like Britney Spears and Destiny's Child down our throats and they wonder why we aren't buying?

Let them rot.

-- Robert Gruber

I think the answer to the decline of music and concert sales is twofold, and also quite obvious. Problem 1 is the very high price of CDs and concert tickets. As the Napster Wars have brought out, most of the cost of a CD goes to various middlemen and large corporations, and music fans are getting tired of shelling out $18 to make some CEO even richer while the artist goes into debt to the label. This is especially true in the concert business, where tickets are priced well beyond the value of the service provided and out of reach of all but the most committed fans.

The second big problem in the industry is that nearly all the acts named in the article, and that are currently on the Billboard charts, suck mightily. The great majority of current acts are cynically put together commercial enterprises, not artists with real talent and a burning desire to express an artistic vision. The lack of any artistic core, or "soul" if you will, is what makes this music so forgettable.

And while you can fool some of the people all the time, it seems a lot more are wising up to this. So while the business tries to prop up the likes of Brittany Spears on the basis of her looks and lolita naughtiness, fans who want to hear actual musicians are going to check out the Magnetic Fields or Dar Williams or the host of other acts that care about music first, and image and commercialism second.

-- Greg Gulas