If any industry has felt the brunt of the internet as a disruptive technology, it’s the music industry, which has been dealt a heavy blow by the onset of digital music distribution. On the April 28, the RIAA again confirmed this state of affairs when
reporting that CD sales, the mainstay of the business for the last 15 years, were down a whopping 20.5% in 2007. Then on May 2, a Federal Court ordered AOL, Real Networks and Yahoo! to pay $100M to music artists as back payment for streaming their music online, proving that it’s not just the Big Four labels who have been affected by this disruptive shift.