by Rick Dodgson, Foreign Legion Correspondent
It’s been a long time coming music lovers, but the end is nigh so raise your glasses and rejoice over the passing of the music industry as we have known it. Sony BMG, Universal, Warner Music and all the other corporate music money-pigs have been condemned to die, guilty of excessive greed and staggering cluelessness. 2008 will be the year of their destruction and I for one will be shedding no tears over their passing. Let’s face it, the major labels have been hanging around like rotting corpses for the past decade or more, putrid, wide-eyed and helpless in the face of new technologies and a disinterested MySpace generation. Stuck in an outmoded model of consumption, the majors have been desperate to recover the golden age of the 1970s with its pass-me-down groupies, mounds of cocaine and cash-cow platinum albums. But those days are long gone (unless you happen to be in Skeletonwitch). In 2007 you could make the top forty by selling just 20,000 CDs. That might sound like a lot to a Casual Future or a Southeast Engine, but in corporate terms those numbers speak only of failure.