Ars Technica reports Apple has just passed Wal-Mart to become the number one retailer of music in the U.S.

And everybody said it wouldn’t work.

Well, everybody in the rotting old asshat end of the music industry anyway. They probably would have figured it out sooner if they didn’t insist on clinging to their dying rip-off con-job business model and not bothering to actually ask their customers what they really wanted - but no, they were too busy trying to sue the bejeezus out of ‘em to pay attention.

The fact that a digital-only retailer has ascended to the top of the sales charts is not unexpected, but it does demonstrate just how much the music landscape has changed since the beginning of the decade. The NPD Group has been tracking a “sharp increase” in digital downloads over the past several months as physical sales dry up. According to NPD’s research, 48 percent of US teens didn’t buy a single CD in 2007, compared to 38 percent in 2006.

Well - duh.

The last time I purchased a CD was online - directly from the artist - to support her work. It has been years since I have walked into a store and bought a CD. I’m an old fart, not some shiny new tech-savvy young geeked-out whippersnapper, so when the impact of change can be easily observed on my own day-to-day buying patterns you can be damned sure the industry in question is going through significant re-structuring.

Hear that flushing sound? That’s the sound of the music industry being re-structured.

For the music industry, there is a dark side to Apple’s ascension to the top of the charts. Buying patterns for digital downloads are different, as customers are far more likely to cherry pick a favorite track or two from an album than purchase the whole thing. In contrast, brick-and-mortar sales are predominantly high-margin CDs. For 2007, that translated into a 10 percent decline in overall music spending according to the NPD Group, and it’s a trend that’s expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

This same shit is going down with the television and film industries too. And, perhaps most significantly, it is also affecting change in political processes. Culture is politics.

I’m in the midst of reading Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It and while I am ever optimistic about our near-future cultural evolution through disruptive digital technologies it is sobering to note how the forces of these large greed obsessed media corporations and their political poo-slinging monkey co-horts are working diligently to stifle, stop and claw-back the minor advancements we have thus far borne witness to.

Say what?

The premise behind Zittrain’s book is this: “Use or lose it - and be prepared to organize and fight for it as you would you most basic freedoms.” The world is going digital and that’s not just where the cool music lives now, it’s also the home to how we see and hear the world itself; it is where we speak and sing and dance of ourselves; and it may very well become where we live.

Damned if I’m gonna let some pansy ass nickle-licking fuckwad in a shiny suit take my world away from me.

Social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and others scare the crap out of the power elite. Video sharing sites like YouTube freak them out because they don’t have the control over the message they used to enjoy and felt entitled to own. The ever, and rapidly, evolving ability of individuals and groups of citizens to reach out and gather electronically, to share their perspective of life on this ball in space is nothing short of being absolutely fucking amazing. The human species is changing because of this.

Yeah, sure, we’re talking about a handful of lucky folks with phones and computers - compared to the billions that live, starve and die in shit all day every day. Guess again. That’s in the process of changing too. Add those clamouring voices to the mix and you have a very different world.

From time to time I advocate in these posts for you to go out and get active - to call your political representatives or sign petitions or go piss on the Prime Minister’s doorstep. All well and good. Now I’m going to suggest something else for you to do. Don’t worry. It’s fun - and simple.

Use the net.

Don’t just use it for playing Scrabulous - (guilty as charged) - or just for email or just for reading the news or trading silly videos or finding the latest batch of LOLCats. Use the net as fuly as you can. To hell with worries about it being addictive. Hell, breathing is fucking addictive and you don’t see many support groups to help us stop doing that. I’m writing off the top of my head here - which is an awkward position to reach the keyboard - so I know I’m rambling. I guess what I’m tryng to say here is this: don’t just be a Consumer of the internet - become a Creator. Post stories - words and pictures. Post videos. Post opinions. Make stuff that expresses who you are and what you believe in and flood those pansy ass tubes of the telcos and cable companies. Cram your world down their throats. Insist on being there. Insist on being heard.

Why do that?

Because it’s fun. Making stuff is fun. It doesn’t have to be serious to have meaning. It just has to be. And I’m willing to bet that the more you use the internet as a Creator instead of as a Consumer you will feel even more deeply than before that it is a place which belongs to all of us and should not be taken away, nr cut apart and sold back to us. Make things. Make it your world. Invite the rest of the world into your world. And that makes Change.

The altered revolutionary poster above is not indicative of how deluded I am about all this. I may be an optimist but I’m not a retard. That’s just my dumb bunny way of using a metaphoric iconic imagery to state the obvious: Culture is politics. Communication is freedom. Nobody owns us.

‘Nuff said.

Now, when if China opens up internet access for the Olympic Games we’ll see a real big-ass tsunami of a sea change.

Cheers.