Why CD sales are declining: another insight

Will the music industry's aggressive fight against downloading make major strides towards reversing the decline in CD sales? One argument is that it will have little affect. The reason can be seen in the graph on the left from Edison Media Research, as first shown in the eMarketer. According to this research, the largest influence on which CDs people buy is radio. Friends and relatives are a distant second. And the major trend in radio over the past three years has been consolidation:

Due to consolidation, today Radio plays a fewer variety of artists, and airs less songs. Consumers hear less music.

And they buy less. What should the RIAA do to increase the sales of CDs? Fight radio consolidation is one idea:

If the RIAA were smart -- and if you suspect by now I think they are not, congratulations, you've been paying attention -- they would hire a lobbyist to petition against pretty much everything Clear Channel Radio ever requests of Congress.

Is it really smart, though, to identify as your primary target the medium that lets the public know about your product? The trends in sales have brought levels back to what they were in the late 1990's -- perhaps it's too early to make any lasting enemies trying to reverse things immediately. And there's still no discussion about whether music is influencing the sales of music CDs.