Itunes Overtakes Walmart Album Sales

According to a New York Times article, music is now primarily sold digitally.

So what does this mean? It means the death of the traditional album.

Here is an article I wrote for The Daily Collegian that talked about this day and what it means for the music listeners:

Music lovers should be glad to be born in this generation. For $5 a month, you can listen to anything - there is a whole world of music at the click of a button.
The Internet provides access to so much music that would otherwise go unheard. Just a few years ago, back in the CD generation, listeners had to have money and time to find that one rare album.
Since almost anything can be found online, there is no longer a need to go to a record store. The digital makeover will ruin the Mom and Pop record store, but at the same time, it will release music from much of the corporate grip that has plagued the art for a long time.
Corporations like Wal-Mart and Best Buy are the biggest sellers of music and have been able to control the music market by selecting what music they will sell. Record companies have had to keep that in mind when recording an artist.
For instance, Wal-Mart bans albums that are of "explicit content," giving the artist an ultimatum: censor the albums or lose the sales from those stores.
Wal-Mart distributes 25 percent of music sales, according to a November 2005 article on Mac360. The chain doesn't like politics or swearing in music, but movie viewers can always get the new bloody movie that just came out.
However, Wal-Mart and Best Buy losing money should be the least of listeners' worries. The ones that truly suffer are the small record shops.
Every music lover can remember picking up a record and running home to give it a listen. That exhilaration is gone and it's not coming back.
Record stores should cut their losses right now. In five years, it will be hard to find a CD player, unless that device is part of a computer connected to the Internet.
The drawback of digital music is that you can't hold it in your hand or flip through a booklet of it. You can't show off your collection to your friends without waiting for the screen to load.
Should we consider this the death of the music collector? Don't worry, it is just a transition time now - the only thing to do is embrace it.