Last week, my pregnant friend was laid off from the Sam Goody store she worked at for 10 years. Music stores are closing down left and right because no one buys music anymore, they just steal/share it from the Internet. You might ask, why is this happening?

You might ask this if you work for one of the major label record companies, Clear Channel or the Recording Industry Association of America, the latter currently responsible for filing over 200 lawsuits against illegal file sharers. Surely with all the excellent music on mainstream radio and MTV, people should be clamoring to buy new music.

The fact is, even if you lower the new Limp Bizkit CD to $10 and packaged it with a DVD, no one wants to buy it. Music fans know better and would rather invest in a band that doesn’t suck ass. Casual listeners can download it off the Internet. Sure the album will sell 3 million copies, but with the costs of promotions and waxing Fred Durst’s back, no one is making shit off the record.

The Wherehouse Music I used to buy all my new CDs at in high school just closed down to open a nutrition store. Yet Amoeba Music in Los Angeles still thrives, raking in more money than ever. I went twice over the summer and spent over 50 bucks each time. I was thrilled by the amount of amazing music I had found, some of which I could never find online and didn’t want to, not if I could own the record myself for a reasonable price.

I have approximately 500 songs downloaded at any given time and I could theoretically be sued at any moment. For instance, take the 12-year-old girl who got sued for downloading Barney’s theme song or whatever.

I haven’t said anything that hasn’t been said already ‹ I’m just restating it. I’m doing this because I love music too much to see it go down the shithole while the RIAA sues children and teenagers as they drive along apathetically, bumping the latest Chingy record.

Listen to music. Seek it out. Turn off the radio, read a music magazine, go down to the local record store, and buy yourself something you’ve never heard before. It’s not going to come to you. 91X overplaying the new band with letters missing from its name (e. g. Trapt, Staind, etc.) isn’t going to make it suck any less. Don’t look at albums you bought five years ago and say, “”Gosh, I sure wish they made Œem like they used to.”” They make records just as good, if not better.

I’ll risk sounding righteous or condescending because I want everyone to hear artists like Cat Power and Wilco. They’ve released two of the best records in recent memory, the kind that almost anyone can enjoy because they’re not offensively loud or strange but still possess the kind of engaging individuality that makes them great artists.

But no one who went out of their way to find out what all the fuss was about heard the music. Radio wouldn’t touch them, that’s for sure. Why is Wilco’s top-20, critically acclaimed album ­ about which a major motion picture was made ­ ignored by so many people?

People have to start listening to music differently. Some already do, but no one has come up with a good way to incorporate it into the current market. Sure, 99 cents a songŠ how about free? Suing people into not downloading music is like Prohibition; it’s not going to stop now that it has started.

Everyone is responsible. The music is there. People have to want to listen, and those in charge need to make people want to listen instead of run away and shut out music forever.

One clarification: not all mainstream music is bad. You have no excuse to hate on the Strokes, hipsters. Their new record is dope.