ITunes Good for Indie Record Stores

By 2009, the music biz will be all digital. New tunes will be sold online only, which spells doom for big record chains like Tower, Wherehouse and Camelot.

Independent record stores, on the other hand, will probably thrive, predicts MetroActive:

"(Marc Weinstein, owner of Amoeba Records), who says he's never downloaded anything in his life, has friends who own iPods. The idea of lugging around a cigarette pack-sized player instead of a stack of CDs is appealing. And though he admires the format, he says it lacks the human touch: no big artwork, no liner notes, no lyrics and, most importantly, no soaking up an album's worth of music and ideas at one sitting. 'I'm too much of a record guy,' he says. 'I'm a big fan of the format and package. And I'm a fan of the LP where an artist can curate a number of songs and present them as a group.'"