I ran across this old Salon article yesterday. Eric Boehlert's "What's Wrong With The Music Industry?" could have been written in any year this decade. The only difference was lower touring revenues that year. In the last few years, the live music business has been booming.

"'What we're seeing is a downward trend of the business,' says one industry veteran from the touring side. 'It's continuing to implode. And folks don't really have a clue. The leadership at labels, senior management of the business, doesn't have a clue where the industry is going, tech issues aside.'"

The article was written in July of 2001. At the time the state of the music business may have seemed grim, but today many people would love to go back to 2001. iTunes and P2P had not yet unbundled the album. There were only unfounded fears -- not the more proven worries there are now -- about file-sharing. Competition from video games was not as fierce. Music retailers were healthier and more abundant. The industry is about a million headaches removed from 2001.

The funny thing -- not exactly "ha ha" funny -- is that six years later there's no agreement on the best way to revive the health of recorded music. The live music industry, along with the economy, rebounded from its 2001 woes. Labels, though, have continued to stumble, fight and downsize.

Fans are better off. There are far more ways to acquire music. (Though there are fewer retailers, digital music has allowed for new online stores and services with millions of tracks.) Recorded music prices are no higher than they were in 2001 (thanks in part to the FTC and mass merchants). The iPod and iTunes made digital music easy, and for many made music fun again. Music blogs now give everybody their three seconds of fame. MySpace connects artists and fans. There's now satellite radio, far more Internet radio and music-slanted social networking sites like last.fm. You can get a CD with your Starbucks coffee, or a new Prince CD with your Sunday newspaper. Music festivals are sprouting up all over the country. YouTube seems to have catalogued the history of music. Wikipedia offers in a split second what used to require fumbling through a Trouser Press guide. For all the griping about RIAA lawsuits and DRM, music fans are far, far better off than they were in 2001.