But even aside from Napster and CD-Rs and iPods, the seeds of a downturn were planted in the 1980s. There had been generations of format replacements-- cylinde

But even aside from Napster and CD-Rs and iPods, the seeds of a downturn were planted in the 1980s. There had been generations of format replacements-- cylinders to 78 to 45 to 33, reel-to-reel to weird cartridges and 8-track, then onward to compact cassette, but the CD ended up being the last meaningful physical audio format. It's durable enough that people aren't having to re-buy their favourites after they unspool in the player, or the groove was reamed out by a heavy tonearm. It's high-fidelity enough that a replacement format won't make a sonic difference on most consumer grade equipment. It's convenient enough that people didn't need to buy another format as a compromise for portable play. This meant all past business models for music consumption were going to fail as CDs reached saturation. You're not going to be selling a lot of classic albums anymore. The only way to go forward would have been an endless supply of new content, but then we get to the matter of attention and shelf space being finite. Sure, Napster may have been pulled the trigger, but it shot an uindustry that was already on the verge of a massive coronary.