This is what happens when you sell crap for twenty years.

Billboard charts headline: Album sales hit new low.

As streaming gathers momentum, the U.S. music industry keeps breaking sales milestones -- the wrong kind.
 
This week's 3.97-million album sales tally is the smallest weekly sum for album sales since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking data in 1991. It's also the first time weekly sales have fallen below four million in that time span.

Streaming. Sure. Keep on believing its the streaming, Hollywood.

Couldn't be the fact that all mass market albums have ONE decent song on them, could it?

Couldn't be the fact that all mass-market songs sound -exactly- like Britney Spears singing "Baby One More Time" waaaaay back in 1999, could it?

Couldn't be the fact that all mass-market listeners would be hard pressed to name one "break out" artist from the last five years, could it?

Couldn't be the fact that the only stuff you can hear out there that's even faintly innovative is Techno and Trance? Which is all sold online?

Couldn't be the fact that "new" pop songs are written by software and sung by teens who have been coached practically since they were toddlers to sing like Britney?

Naw! Couldn't be that!

Compare latest 2014 pop-ette Ariana Grande with 90's Britney Spears or Christina Agulera, there's no difference. Its been 15 years. They're still milking that same cow. You want to hear something outside that stripper-mode rut, you have to scour the internet for people releasing stuff they made in the basement direct to the web.

Last two songs I bought? "Knight Time" by Don Diablo and "Tsuki No Koibumi" by C418 and Lara Shigihara. Last album I bought after a -really- long drought, "The Princess" by Parov Stelar. That's so far out of the mainstream I can't even see the shore from here. Radio stations I listen to: Electric Area and BPM on Sirius. That's it.

With any luck these freakin' dinosaurs will go out of business and some proper music will get made.

The Phantom