Things have been bad for the music industry ever since itunes and it is getting worse. Physical album sales are expected to drop 40%. The RIAA in the US and the worldwide IFPI have often said that these drops in sales are only due to piracy, but we all know that that is just bogus. Much of the drop is due to the decline of the album format.

Much of the industry’s sales has always been due to stronger whole albums in some cases and of course the necessity to buy a whole album at $15 to $20, even when you only want one or two songs. Strong quality albums are what sells. Quality. Are there any modern Beatles? Stones? Bah. I’m going back to bed.

We all know that AIDS is killing a lot of people not only here in America, but especially in countries where access to medicines and medical care is hard to come by. (RED) is familiar enough in the technology world and usually associated with gadgets bearing the (RED) logo and a corresponding red paint job.

Today marks the launch of a new digital music magazine called (RED)WIRE. The magazine will be delivered to subscriber’s inbox every Wednesday. For the launch today (RED)WIRE is offering fans performances form U2, Jay-Z, Coldplay, John Legend, Dixie Chicks and more.

Grace Digital has come out recently with a number of new products to help convert vinyl to digital music, such as the Victoria Classic shown above. These new models – the Victoria Tunewriter, Victoria Classic and AVPUSB01S – price at around $300, $170 and $90, respectively.

All of these devices are designed to let you digitize your old records (LPs) and cassettes. Modes of digitizing include letting you record directly to CDs or digital music files which can be stored directly on an attached USB thumb drive. You can get the full details after the jump.

Best Buy announced today the release of its Best Buy Digital Music Store. This new service will give music lovers yet another option in the increasingly competitive digital music domain.

The new digital music service is powered by the RealNetworks Rhapsody 4.0 music service, and features both a permanent download store and a subscription download service.

This announcement is great for consumers who will now have even more options for purchasing digital music. Best Buy has a long road ahead of them with competitors like the iTunes Music Store dominating with over 80% market share and the recent launch of the Microsoft Zune Marketplace.