No one's buying records anymore:

Even worse for the industry, 4.97 million of them were Justin Bieber. So why are sales off? Many reasons.

1) The single is more important than the album again. People would rather buy a batch of singles they like than an album stuffed with filler. The album was once the Grand Artistic Statement, but no one has the attention span for this anymore.

2) For some, modern music is pre-fab tic-tok rote dreck, made for clubs that serve the "Jersey Shore" demographic.

3) The rise of internet radio means a non-stop supply of music tailored to your exact preferences. Why buy albums when you can hear all sorts of stuff from streaming stations or Pandora?

That's about it. No other reason. Well, if we had to come up with a fourth reason, it would be this: people are downloading everything and not paying for it, because they don't think they should pay for it, or because they think it's overpriced, or they think the bands should give the music away and make their money selling T-shirts and concert tickets, and if they don't do this everyone is justifying in taking their music without paying for it. In related news:

Limewire will probably be gone soon, like Grokster and Napster and all the other high-profile file-swapping services, but this won't stop file sharing. Short of an asteroid strike, nothing is likely to do that.