Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

Wal-Mart has loss leaders -- a product sold at low price to stimulate other profitable sales.

That's what music downloads and CDs need to be for the record industry -- loss leaders.

Now some could sarcastically say that CDs and legal downloads are already loss leaders for the labels -- and I'd laugh along with them.

But there's a difference.

Record labels are going to go down with declining sales in Compact Discs while downloads will never make up the loss of revenue. Thus, the present conundrum. So, in response to their dilemma, the labels are doing what ever red-blooded American business would do --&hellip