What's wrong with the music business? Hmmm, could it be that most of the struggling acts you mentioned -- Mariah Carey, Puff Daddy, Destiny's Child -- are all crap? Here in San Francisco where Clear Channel has a stranglehold on all major concert venues and tickets average $25 a show, I've found it much more rewarding to spend my dollars at the local level supporting the indie unknowns in the smaller clubs.

-- Mark Jerome

Ultimately, the real reason for this rapid decline of record and ticket sales is the fact that popular music has become stagnant. No longer is artistic merit, originality or a sense of vision part of the artist's makeup. Whether bands or solo artists, they've grown stale, recycling the same old impotent melodies and vacuous lyrics, which seem like nothing but nonsensical filler to stick on top of the prosaic music. I mean, C'mon, where are the Bob Dylans, the Neil Youngs, the Peter Gabriels of today? Where's the talent with vision, freshness and something substantial to say. Who? Sugar Ray? With that dim-witted chorus of "I Just Wanna Fly": "Watchu want, watchu want ..."

Please, Sugar Ray, just fly away to a planet of nothing but pubescent teenage girls whose estrogen overload makes you feel like a legitimate artist. That's where you belong. And while you're there send out some homing signals to bring the likes of 'N Sync, Backstreet Boys, 98°, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and all the other cookie-cutter numbskulls, back to your planet of the chronically lame. The Mayan priests claimed that all life was sung into being by disincarnate spirits. Well, today the only thing being sung into being is the wholesale decline of music-industry standards. The industry and its artists aren't giving life -- they need to get a life! Please, if there's but one music industry executive out there with a single shred of insight or intelligence, pull your head out of your nether regions, and look beyond your accountant's ledger, and recruit some real artists back into the biz. Until then, my stereo's in storage. Good day!

-- Stephen Goldfinger

So record sales are down, huh? Blame Napster? Get real.

The truth is that record company execs have once again lost sight of what the public wants. Instead of spending their time engineering wonderment for us (i.e., 'N Sync, et al.), they could be combing the nation for actual talent. However, that may be tough to come by at a time when the bumper crop of new musicians largely reflects the absence of any solid musical force in the last five years.

The same execs who cannot fathom the benefits of Internet-based music are also responsible for defanging popular music in the mid-'90s. Social issues are no longer present in most music, and the biting edge of metal, punk and rap has been watered down so much that it all fits quite well into Muzak formats. Without any innovation or risk, why would anyone listen to the same bland crap over and over again.

Back catalog sales are sagging? No wonder. These same managerial masterminds have their radio stations anchored to playlists that play the same 12 songs ad nauseam. Without exposure to further tracks from back catalog albums, there is no incentive for consumers to go out and buy older material. Further, those same playlists prevent DJs from exposing people to new material that comes in from other, noncorporate outlets.

Finally, there's the problem of service charges on concert tickets. Can anyone do anything about it? Doubtful. Pearl Jam went all the way to Congress about the problem, and nothing happened. Actually, that's not true. Once the entertainment conglomerates saw that Congress had no interest in restraining them, charges soared.

All hail the new musical machine!

-- Paul D. Addis