You post is all that one would need to see what is happening. There are still a few bands that are bucking all these trends. Wilco comes to mind. It is nothing but product now days. Sell and move one.
With Wilco:
They finish an Album (Yankee Foxtrot Hotel) and deliver it to Reprise Records (Time Warner)
Reprise says it sucks and wants massive changes,
Wilco says no.
Reprise dumps them.
Wilco buys back the Album and shops it.
Nonesuch, (another Time Warner company) buys it for even more money that Reprise could have.
The Album is a huge hit and Critics even love it.
The Short term profit model has infected the world of music and has destroyed it. They can now cry like a baby all they want. They killed the industry.
Music is just another form of media to buy. It is not important to people anymore. No Artists are singing for the current generation. It is all fast food.
It's funny to see this thread this a.m., maybe there's a reason I've been listening to Sinatra all weekend. "Songs For Swinging Lovers" and "Only the Lonely" are definitely NOT fast food, which is the reason they sound absolutely as fresh and vital as they did when they were first released a half-century ago. That stuff has lasted. Little of the present-day stuff will, IMHO.
Well, the record industry used to be the narrow cultural focal point through which everyone looked to obtain new music - now music can be had everywhere through thousands of independent channels, and Big Music has permanently lost its monopoly. Music isn't taught in schools much any more, so the public lacks the ability it might have collectively had in, say, the Fifties, to discriminate between good and bad.
Predictions of the death of the music industry are premature. I expect we are just undergoing a shift in focus: more bands on the low end able to make money by marketing and selling their recordings and performing live - and far fewer mega-acts raking in millions for the big record companies. It's that latter phenomenon that has Big Music crying in their appletinis. ;)
One trend that has been harmful is the conversion of rock/jazz oriented clubs over to techno/house/hip hop/DJ music - one DJ is cheaper to a club owner than hiring bands, and the format brings in a crowd that buys expensive drinks rahter than the $2 beers rock audiences prefer. Musicians have always made most of their money performing live - the recording is just a commerical for the live performance. Theoretically (Lars Ulrich's protests notwithstanding) a band should be able to make zero money from record sales and still do well from live performance revenues...if they can find any place left to play.
Jamie Cullem and John Mayer are two.
Problem is, their music is sophisticated, so most twenty-somethings (sorry) don't get to hear it.