>started when cost of production went down while return on
>investment went up. i wish i had time to source numbers, but
>bascially the music industry created a huge bubble
>pre-internet which set their expectations for sales super high
>(think of those platinum plus debuts). We forget this was all
>before the internet. they were risking big budgets for quick
>high returns and it was working. so they repeated it. then
>the internet popped up (around the same time consumers were
>wising up to the glut) numbers drop back to *normal* but the
>expectations stay high. since then it's been basically a free
>for all, trying to live up to those past expectations. but
>those were all very controlled case studies. today they don't
>have half the control.

it was a bubble, and this is the result of it bursting