That's an interesting pie chart, Dave. I hope it's true, actually, because the "Royalties to artist and songwriter" slice is a lot larger than I was led to believe by Courtney Love et al.

I have no problem with giving a retail record store that much of a markup. Retail markup is part of business, it's the only way retail stores can exist. And the marketing/promotion engines are the way we learn the record exists, so they're a necessary evil in that system.

I foresee and am actively wishing for a system where the retail record stores and the marketing/promotion engines are no longer necessary. The technology is there, we just need to stitch all the pieces together so that the technology works for us as a tool for finding new music that we'd like. We're inching ever closer to that day.