The title sums this issue up quite well—music is thriving, it’s records that are struggling. As much as we all like to eulogize the heyday of The Industry, music itself is strong as ever. People are spending huge amounts of time glued to their iPods, browsing blogs and checking for new artists via the MySpace and SpaceBooks. Even better, the harsh environment truly does seem to have weeded out a noticeable percentage of unworthy artists and those that remain are putting more effort into creativity than we’ve seen in decades. The problem is that while people are willing to spend money on concerts and buy beer because Santogold is in their commercials, they’ve been trained to expect the music itself to be free. Is that really a problem though? The money’s still there, someone smarter than me just has to figure out a better way to scoop it up… [hypebot]