'the average American spends only $17 a year on music'

Really?

 the average American spends only $17 a year on music, a number cited to me by an indie label executive who wished to remain anonymous. "If you get more folks spending $17 a month on music," he says, "there's a bigger pot of money to split up and it lets us use the power of our own marketing rather than gatekeepers to develop fans and convert that most precious commodity — attention — into revenue, however that consumer might choose to engage."

Source: Debate rages as Spotify, MOG, and Rdio kill / save the music industry - The Verge

H/T maoxian

I am not an 'average' music consumer. And I am not 'America'. But $17? I can spend that on music in a day*.

And does that $17 refer to money spent on streaming subscriptions? Downloads from iTunes or Amazon? Would iTunes Match or Google Music count?

(*Most recent purchases: John Forté - The Water Suite - EP;John Forté - The Bloomingdale's Acoustics - EP and John Forté - From Brooklyn to Russia With Love! (The Sampler) - EP. Yes, I'm really into John Forté. And yes, purchased in one sitting.)

Relevant: Behind the music: Is Sweden selling its music-makers for a song? - the guardian Release day economics - uniform motion Spotify From a Musician’s Perspective - musicianwages.com

 

Think Progress » Limbaugh says we need to return to ‘segregated buses.’

Last week, a video of a school bus beating showing two African American children assaulting a white student began circulating the internet. Despite claims by authorities that the attack was not necessarily racially motivated, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh jumped on the story and claimed that in “Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up.” Yesterday, Limbaugh proposed a solution to this problem — a return to segregated busing:

LIMBAUGH: I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.

via thinkprogress.org

 

Not to bang on about it but - the idea that Obama's election to the presidency signalled a new, more positive era in race relations in America is a complete fallacy.