Boehlert's original story is here:

What's wrong with the music biz? Napster's out of the picture, but for the first time in a decade, album sales are down -- and ticket sales are sagging too.

A complete list of his reporting on radio payola and industry behemoth Clear Channel can be found here:

Radio's Big Bully: The new "pay for play" and the rise of Clear Channel.

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CDs cost too much

Your article "What's wrong with the music biz?" mentioned the rise in concert prices as a possible reason behind the drop in concert attendance. What about the price of CDs? I think the record industry could do very well to look at their prices as a reason behind slacking sales.

I would personally be very interested to see average CD prices throughout the last few decades adjusted for inflation, because I bet that they have been rising in real money for quite some time. I know that a CD represents a rather substantial investment -- approximately 3 hours of work at minimum wage -- and many of us not-so-wealthy consumers are loath to shell out a lot of cash (relatively) for a product we're less than 100 percent certain of.

-- Mike DuBose

Horrors at a Stevie Nicks concert

I'll tell you what's wrong with the concert business. People are treated like ATM machines.

I recently attended a Stevie Nicks concert in Hartford, Conn., at a venue that shall remain nameless. My ticket, which of course was subject to "service charges" of almost $10 per ticket, boasted that the ticket provided me with free parking. Arriving at the venue, all of the "free" parking was naturally already filled as the venue does not provide anywhere near enough parking for the number of tickets it sells. So it relies on the neighboring businesses to provide parking, which charged me $10 to park at a show that told me I had free parking.

So the price of my ticket was now in the range of $40, and still growing (and this is for the cheap lawn seats, up on a hill watching little "ants" perform on the stage). This venue, like so many that I have been to, does not allow outside food or beverages inside the gates, and they are gracious enough to rent out lawn chairs to people who don't want to sit on the ground and weren't allowed to bring in their own. So if you want to eat or drink anything, you are subject to the outrageous fees and inferior quality of the concession stands. I paid $7 for a warm beer (and they closed down the beer stands an hour before the show's encore).

Stevie played for approximately an hour and a half, but she was with Sheryl Crow, who performed two of her own songs. Between that and her multiple costume changes, I doubt if she was on the stage for an hour. And this from someone with a long music career and an enormous amount of material to pull from?

To top it all off, after the show ended, it took us about two hours just to get out of our parking space because the one road that led to and from the venue was jammed with unmoving traffic. There were no police or venue employees directing traffic. But then again, why should they? I was parked in a local car dealership, half a mile away from the venue, not in their dinky parking lot. When all was said and done, the concert cost me upward of $60, and I spent more time trying to get out of my parking space than I did seeing Stevie on stage. Not to mention that hour early I had to leave work because the show started at 7:30 on a Friday night. I rarely go to large venues to see shows anymore, and this concert made me remember why. Stop the insanity!!

-- Christopher Pace