Today’s New York Times Magazine has a fascinating cover story profiling producer and newly-minted Columbia co-head Rick Rubin. This 10-page online spread is a great read that I have yet to finish, but one section popped out to me (unrelated to Rubin).

Columbia Records commissioned a group of “20 college students from Harvard, Penn State and the University of Miami to work on various music projects” with the label. They did a focus group with the students to see why it was so difficult to sell records.

The results rang true for me, at the least.

The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don’t consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it’s just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything.”

Pretty much. I don’t know if Facebook is yet to decline in popularity, but MySpace had a rapid fall from grace over the last twelve months.

This is a striking glimpse into the world of our generation. Established music empires cannot sell music, because we all act on whims.

The articles has tons of fascinating tidbits like this – I really recommend checking out the whole thing.