Where have all the albums gone? I mean, where have all the long-playing recordings with multiple songs gone? What happened to the format we used to love called the "concept album"? Killed by radio (who would never play any more than one song by an artist at a time, and even then, nothing over 4 minutes), killed by the attention span of our society (just ask television), and furthermore, killed by Napster.

The format of the "single" has now become the single most important way to market a band (no pun intended). Napster isn't helping, by making available individual songs for download, as opposed to individual albums. An album would take almost 10 times as long to download - it's just easier to download the hits and leave it at that. Songwriters now have to compress their message into under 4 minutes, as opposed to the 45 minutes an album used to be. Would Pink Floyd's "The Wall" be as impactful if it was 3 and a half minutes long?

My final word on this subject is this: if the music industry is claiming to be losing millions of dollars in revenue from the evils of Napster, then why are sales records being broken by the top pop acts of today? N*Sync (don't get me started) sold 2.4 million copies in it's first week, breaking an opening week sales record. Britney Spears (again, don't get me started) did the same thing. If all of their fans had computers, why didn't they just download them from Napster? Is the music industry REALLY suffering, or are they just complaining?

Try Napster. You'll break the law, but try it anyway. It might not stay this way for long.