For a change, The Motley Fool, in its article "Downloads: Music To Labels' Ears," gets some things correct (in bold) about the changing mix of physical and digital music sales.

"...some people are complaining about falling CD sales and the impending death of the music industry as a whole. That might be true for businesses such as Trans World Entertainment (Nasdaq: TWMC), which largely depend on nothing but traditional hard plastic discs for their livelihood, but not for the music labels themselves. Add up traditional and digital sales, and this year's first six months saw slightly higher sales than last year.

Very true. Digital growth spells trouble for brick-and-mortar retail, who are being left out of the digital revolution. They're trying, though: Tower Records launched a digital store, and retailers are trying to find a way to sell downloads through kiosks.

Unfortunately, the article has its errors, too (in bold).

Word on the street has it that $0.07 out of every $0.99 iTunes download makes it into Apple's coffers. The rest is handed over to the labels, which pass on some paltry sum to the artists and writers who haven't yet learned to negotiate decent online rights to their work. The difference is pure profit.

Apple takes about 35% of each sale, which means the label's take about 65%, not 93%. What ends up in Apple's coffers depends on its costs. And it's sad to see the "pure profit" myth make its way into another article. The cost of developing, recording and marketing an album is far from free.