the music scene

Last week, I was told that the music industry is in quite the dire state. Barely ever signing new artists, it has taken to reinventing its older names. This, naturally, concerns me. I understand that business has gone down since the recent boom in pirating, but what else is going on. Two friends of mine were ignored by labels until they were selling enough independent albums to be individually noted on iTunes as ‘Artists to Watch.’ Why the reluctance from the labels? What is going on? Anybody? Bueller?