Welcome, Mike. Believe it or not, your first of what I hope will be many posts already puts you at the top of the list of most frequent posters at this site. Well done!

I'm not sure if the Canadian songwriters association thought through their proposal thoroughly (3 points for alliteration). I saw one of its members being interviewed on CTV a few days ago and he seemed pretty vague about the mechanisms for distributing revenue based on what's being traded/downloaded online. I'm guessing the pool of money will be large enough, given the number of internet subscriptions across the country but I'm not sure they're able to adequately address the other questions you've raised. Also, would we have to add another $5-10 per month to compensate artists from other countries? Would Sympatico/Rogers/Shaw etc. customers who don't download music be willing to fork out another $60+ annually for services they don't use?
Will be interesting to see if this proposal goes anywhere...I suspect it will die a quiet death, at least for the next year or so.

As for the trend towards single downloads...yeah I'm seeing that happening as well. I've kind of resisted it myself (90 emusic monthly downloads--older, grandfathered plan--makes it easy for me to just take the whole album) but cherry picking songs here and there seems to be the order of the day. I haven't noticed a shift on the part of artists to abandon the album concept, at least not yet, or not for the bands to whom I listen. But it may be coming....

I'm sensing you think this is a bad thing, Mike, and I agree. Even though I enjoy and use the shuffle feature, especially when on the go, there's nothing more satisfying than relaxing at home and listening to an album in its entirely. Often the in-between, non-hit tracks are more interesting than the big singles. With a lot of the albums from emusic, I don't even know what songs are the 'hits' until 3 or 4 listens. Case in point, the Bon Iver disc, which I heard the first time yesterday while reading the paper. Reminiscent of Sparklehorse and Baxter Drury, perhaps with a simpler, traditional folk-rock arrangement, each new track offers variations on a dreamy, intimate space, with gentle guitar strumming, sweet falsetto harmonies, the odd violin serving as constants. While I did sample a few tracks before getting the whole thing, I don't think a few tracks on their own would have been as enjoyable.

Another recently available disc on emusic, that I think I mentioned in a previous post, is Atlas Sound's Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel , which I previewed at Soundscapes on Friday. For those of you who like Panda Bear, this should scratch you where you itch.