Most of you may already be aware that the Canadian-based label Gashed! (home to such artists as Aghast View, cut.rate.box, NCC, and formally Assemblage 23 and Negative Format) is no longer among us. Though I'm sure the downfall was mostly due to bad management, speaking from history and many other stories people had to tell about said label, I can't help but think that the CD sells were somewhat hampered by the not so newfound MP3 and CD-R rage.

"People are so used to free music now, and through all the different ways of getting it all they rarely seem to buy CD's anymore. It's really been sad lately to hear about a lot of labels and bands having to quit because they just couldn't make it by anymore. Some may think I make this up, but I don't. You can ask most labels doing industrial music; they will say the same. The major labels benefit from mp3's and Napster of course, because people will always buy their idols ,and heroes , and commercial bubblegum music. Plus it has MTV, and all the other network and cable channels to push this shallow cheeze music most people buy into," says Tommy T, owner of the electro label DSBP, which is now 38 releases strong.

"The thing is this [that] industrial music is more popular in the clubs and public/college radio than ever before; it gets a lot of exposure. Yet sales have dropped for most labels by around 30-50% over the last year or so. That's what I can report, and I'm sure others will follow. Yet, there's so much more music in stock. 4 [times] more of what we had last year for instance. There's a lot of this music out, so the competition is certainly rough, but when your bands are getting bootlegged and put up on Napster and mp3's on peoples sites without permission it spreads like wildfire..and the underground-industrial community is pretty tight with each other. So the loss of sales and income for the bands and labels is imminent."

So what does Tommy T see happening in the future of our beloved genre if this craze does not seize to stop?

"Well, first off, it ain't stopping. I see all these new file sharing and mp3 players, storage all advertised daily on TV and you know the sheep will always follow what they see advertised on TV, right? So it's not going anywhere. We are not gonna let it deter us though. We will figure out ways to combat piracy and spreading of music illegally in any way we can think of, but we know we are outnumbered by the herds of course. Watermarking and shit like that needs to be more opened and talked about since that other side (piracy) is so open in every way it can be."