"In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes... The idea was that music fans, ingrates that they are, would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising)... In 1980, however, the crisis was almost over. It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-poplively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin. They called it disco... " A ray of light stands out today against the ignorance flowing out of the PFF conference. Its nice to see this in a conservative publication like Slate. Hit Charade - The music industry's self-inflicted wounds. By Mark Jenkins | 
