Here is part of a digital music business plan that someone put together in 2004. What do you all think? Should we finish it? Is it still valid?
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How to Take Over a $40 Billion Industry

...Without Even Trying
In the 1920’s, the recording industry tried to stop radio. Congress
and the Supreme Court were called in to decide the fate of the
pirates that were giving their music away.

Radio won.
In the 1940s, ASCAP tried to escalate radio royalties. Radio
formed BMI and embraced the growing number of independent
labels. World War II, a shortage of vinyl and a musicians strike
against the industry short-circuited the industry in the same decade.
In the 1950s, the independents gave birth to rock and roll.
Radio won.

In 1960, convinced that the only reason radio stations were playing
rock and roll was because the disc jockeys were being paid off, the
established industry asked for payola hearings. But rock and roll
survived, along with jazz, rhythm and blues and country-western
— all products of the growth spurt provided to the independents.
And all were initially rejected by the majors as illegitimate product
not fit for the marketplace.
During the past four decades, the major labels have shifted,
combined and consumed the competition, with five labels now
controlling between 84% and 90% of the U.S. market for recorded
music.

Since 1999, the recording industry has actively tried to limit ther
use of the Internet for the exchange of music files. They again
called on Congress and the courts to decide the fate of the pirates.
Generous estimates of the number of artists/acts that our
government is being asked to “protect” (those which the major
labels represent) number less than 10,000.
At the time of its demise in 2003, mp3.com held more than a
million songs (some reports say 1.5 million) from more than
250,000 acts.

Industry executives referred to it as the “Toxic Music Dump.” Yet,
more than a few acts were plucked from mp3.com, so it couldn’t
have been entirely toxic. Even if you make the unreasonable
assumtion that 90 percent of the indie music is not marketable,
there are still more than 2.5 times the total current talent pool of
the major labels.

How many times have you heard this phrase? “...when someone
creates a hit purely from the Internet, then I’ll believe it.”

The Grey Album was it.
So what is everyone still waiting for?

The Great Void
The current debate over file sharing has developed a severe chasm
in which many independents find themselves trapped. Regardless
of talent or commercial viability, their avenues for promotion are
cast with aspersion by claims that downloading is theft and the
implication that the only “legitimate” sources for digital music are
the pay-per-download services that carry primarily (if not entirely)
major label music.

The largest catalog of available music at this time is Apple, with
500,000 songs licensed for its use. This is a third of what the
independents have offered to the public for free via web pages and/
or file sharing networks such as Kazaa.
Most of them would be thrilled to get a quarter per download (25
cents per download more than they’re currently getting), if
someone would merely collect it for them. Maybe even less.
Ironically, they’d be better off than the major artists are under the
current system. Most of the independents have no record labels in
the middle to inflate the price.
On the Internet, independent artists are not bound by the same
webcasting royalty rate established by the RIAA and the Library of
Congress.

So what is everyone still waiting for?
Today’s technology has put tools into the hands of musicians that
very recently required an expensive recording studio, or at least an
expensive recording session. Little more than a decade ago, the
ability to self-produce a high-quality recording was almost
inaccessible to the average musician. Now, digital recording tools
fully capable of better than CD quality are common and widely
owned.

While the recording industry has been busy alienating its core
market demographic, the independent artists have been expanding
their fan base, encouraging the free exchange of their material via
several Internet outlets, DMusic being one of them.
The independents which have created a product on their own in
many cases have succeeded in bypassing one of the three key
reasons artists seek a recording contract —to actually create a
completed, marketable product. They’ve also bypassed losing the
rights to their own music.

As we know, digital distribution is so easy that it’s impossible to
stop — drop a digital file on the Internet and it can circle the globe
almost instantly. This leaves the independent artist of the 21st
century in need of only one service the record labels used to
provide — promotion.