' Sales are down more than 5 percent from 2000.

News stories about the five multinational conglomerates that dominate the music industry - Universal/Vivendi, Sony, EMI-Virgin, BMG and AOL TimeWarner - routinely describe them as 'under seige. Because just about everything involving the making and delivery of music is changing.

In an article he recently wrote for Rolling Stone, Henley theorized that most artists have remained silent not because of 'altruistic selflessness but rather a sort of cantankerous independence, an anti-club mentality coupled with a cultivated naivete about all things political. )Д«ut until the creation of RAC and like-minded independent-artists' advocacy efforts such as the Future of Music Coalition, the views of creative types on issues involving their checkbooks have gotten haphazard airings in interviews that rarely articulated grievances or views shared by a number of artists. (One practice, still in effect, charges artists a 'packaging fee' for music delivered via the Internet, even though no packaging is used. Yes, Metallica made noise about Napster, and the RAC's Sheryl Crow testified on Capitol Hill about the labels' contractual high jinks. In the last few years, as technology and fine-print changes in recording contracts have altered the music business, artists have been perilously quiet. It was an extraordinary opening strike, timed to cause maximum freakout among members of the industry's fat-cat wing on 'music's biggest night. These shows raised money for the Recording Artists Coalition (RAC), a nonprofit founded by Don Henley and others to agitate for artists' rights on a multitude of issues, many of which find record labels and their signees in opposite corners. The cause wasn't hunger, or AIDS, or any of the usual crusades. Last Tuesday, a day before the Grammy Awards, an armada of famous singers and musicians performed four high-profile benefit concerts around Los Angeles.

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