In an Op-Ed about the demise of albums and record stores and the rise of the downloaded single:

The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.

— Spinning Into Oblivion, By TONY SACHS and SAL NUNZIATO, New York Times, Published: April 5, 2007

Hm, how could that have happened?

The writers go on to detail it:

In the late ’90s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices.

The recording industry association saw the threat that illegal downloads would pose to CD sales. But rather than working with Napster, it tried to sue the company out of existence — which was like thinking you’ve killed all the roaches in your apartment because you squashed the one you saw in the kitchen. More illegal download sites cropped up faster than the association’s lawyers could say “cease and desist.”

And this is by a couple of former music store owners; the sort of people you’d think the record industry was trying to protect and promote in its efforts to maintain the status quo by suing every threat to it into oblivion. Nope; as they point out, the record companies partnered with Best Buy and Wal-Mart instead; places that could sell other stuff along with CDs. Basically, the record companies tried to stonewall around a fat head of CDs and to pretend that the long tail, even such of it as was represented by record stores, didn’t exist.

The writers say the record companies are now finally trying to do something with the Internet, but they don’t know how. Besides, who would trust them at this point?

It’s tempting for us to gloat. By worrying more about quarterly profits than the bigger picture, by protecting their short-term interests without thinking about how to survive and prosper in the long run, record-industry bigwigs have got what was coming to them. It’s a disaster they brought upon themselves.

How many other industries are bringing disaster upon themselves by similar short-term status-quo reactionary thinking? It’s not good risk management.

-jsq