2006 was the worst year for hit albums in 23 years.
According to the RIAA's database,only 285 albums went gold, platinum or multiplatinum (that's 500,000, 1,000,000 and 1-10 million units sold respectively).
At the same time, legal digital downloads, digital music players and an interest in music in general is higher than it's ever been.
So what's happening?
A paradigm shift! (a way of thinking and collection of beliefs and values that is changing).
Instead of music only being available through record stores in CD through a record labels, new technology and the Web has opened up a wider market and the money earnt by a few big labels is now spreading out to a wider group of artists.
So while the mainstream music label arena is beginning to feel the pinch, for the independent artist the news is far from gloom and doom - in fact it's looking good for us.
People are directing their attention to blogs, podcasts and streaming videos posted on sites such as MySpace, YouTube and new contesters such as Helloworld which has introduced live webcasting (meaning you can perform live on the net - just like live TV).
Instead of music being a selection of big hits (and flops) it has now become a case of smaller hits and discovered niches.
The attention (and the money) is spreading out to more musicians.
This is THE time for indie musicians with new technology giving us the tools we need to get our music out there.
The rest is up to us.
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