Beat It - Live?

The Age recently reported that Michael Jackson's album Thriller was voted the number one album of all time. In the article MTV Base presenter presenter Trevor Nelson is quoted as having said: "I don't think there'll ever be another album like it in the history of music...There will never be a marriage of producer and artist, or songwriting and pop sensibility like that again. Due to the way people buy records now, there'll never be an album that sells as many copies."

Now, I have been thinking about that statement for oh, about three minutes now and during this extensive period of meditation I have to wonder, is that necessarily a bad thing? Or more to the point, why is it so significant that there will apparently never be another album to rival Thriller in terms of sales.
Now I'm going to go ahead and say straight up that I know next to nothing about the music business, but looking at "the way people buy records now" and in light of the fact that apparently "there'll never be an album that sells as many copies" I would have to say this is a very healthy thing for the industry.
These days less and less people are buying CDs or records, digital distribution is becoming the new standard, and more specifically, illegal downloads from peer-to-peer clients like Limewire and Bittorrent are almost more common that legally purchased music.

The way I see it, a decrease in CD sales should result in bands finding most of their income through live performances. If bands realise they aren't going to have a Thriller on their hands every time they enter the recording studio then they have to work on their live shows, right? In this dream world of mine, artists will tour more often which means they will have no choice but to practice more often which will hopefully result in less and less bands pulling a "Panic! At The Disco"; that is to say they won't ONLY sound good on an album (and even then it's a matter of opinion). This will hopefully also result in less mass produced crap finding its way onto the charts; Britney I'm looking at you!


(Not pictured here: Good Music)

Maybe I'm just crazy but it seems, from the tone of the article, that there was a sense of having lost something. That the best has passed now that "there'll never be an album that sells as many copies." But to me it's a good thing. I say less CD sales, more live performances, higher quality performances and more skill involved in performances from now on!

P.S.
Some astute readers may notice that in deciding the greatest album of all time "More than 40,000 votes were cast by fans asked to choose their favourite album since 1981 from a shortlist of 26 LPs." Now call me crazy, but isn't it hard to say that anything is the greatest "all time" anything when it's only looking at such a limited time frame. Also what were the other 26 LPs? Maybe they were really crap like Read Along With Chopper or The Wiggles do Cats: A Disco. Was Thriller simply the diamond in the rough?? YOU DECIDE!