“This year could determine whether the music business as we know it survives. In the first six months of 2002, CD sales fell 11 percent – on top of a 3 percent decline the year before. Sales of blank CDs jumped 40 percent last year, while the users of Kazaa, the biggest online file-trading service, tripled in number. As recently as 10 years ago, the media conglomerates that own record labels regarded them as cash cows – smaller than Hollywood but more reliably profitable. Now all five major labels are either losing money or barely in the black, and the industry’s decline is turning into a plunge.”