Just where is music going at the moment? One journalist decides to take the industry’s temperature by listening to every CD released in the month of October. “I’m struck not just by the sheer quantity – 25,793 CDs were released last year, over double the figure produced in 1994 – but also by the variety. The cost of entry into the market is lower than it ever was before. It costs less to manufacture CDs, and it costs less to record an album. At the same time, the gap between those albums that sell in huge quantities and those that don’t is probably greater than ever.”