Here's a nice article by Neil Strauss in Sunday's New York Times on the latest battle between artists and record industry:
Behind the Grammys, Revolt in the Industry.

The major record labels depend on three things to survive: the money of fans, the music of their artists and the support of the multinational corporations that own them. But the labels are suddenly realizing that they can't depend on any of these. In the past, downturns were attributed to the cyclical nature of the recording business. But this is the first time in recent memory that everyone across the board — artists, executives, fans and industry observers — seems cynical about the very future of record labels as we know them.

"If the industry doesn't change the way we do business," said Val Azzoli, co-chairman of Atlantic Records, "we're going to be bankrupt."

While it has been widely reported that music sales were down 5 percent last year, this is the least of the music business's woes. What is more troubling is not yesterday's sales but tomorrow's profits, and panicked executives are hurling recriminations in all directions: at radio stations with ever more limited playlists, at the downloading of music from the Internet, at the increased ease of duplicating CD's on home computers and stereos, at the skyrocketing costs of marketing albums, at artists fighting their record companies, at the replacement of musically knowledgeable executives with corporate bean counters and at multinational companies that demand quick profits and instant hits. Add to all this new judicial and political problems, most recently a court ruling Friday in the Napster case that states that the record labels' own Internet services "may run afoul of Internet antitrust laws."