[BC] music industry woes

[Barry Mishkind]

At 01:05 PM 10/21/2007, Robert Orban wrote
>An old friend of mine was just laid off from Universal's marketing 
>department in Los Angeles, along with his boss and 11 other staff 
>members -- Universal nuked his whole department because the 
>company's sales downturn made it economically impossible to continue 
>running it. Mark had been working there for over 5 years. Don't 
>delude yourself; file sharing *is* hurting real people and so far, 
>digital downloads are not making up for lost CD sales ;-(

         Bob, I won't debate whether file sharing has or hasn't
         hurt. Whether it is that or just the fact that current
         "music" is not as attractive to buyers - or some other
         issue - your anecdote is as indicative of the music
         industry's problems as the broadcast industry's issues.

         If sales are down, you don't kill off the marketing
         department. You find out what sort of marketing will
         work for the product.

         I would think, unless your friend and the others were
         all making multi-million dollar salaries that this was
         a short-sighted cost-cutting move by someone worried
         about *their* job, rather than a reasoned approach to
         help the company succeed.