Chuck D. on "the long tail"

By Martin E. Klimek, For USA TODAY.
Chuck D, a rapper and music entrepreneur, says that after the dust settles from this digital era, the best of the artists will still be around.

<>From a USA Today Roundtable:

Chuck D: If you're looking for that fourth Sam Cooke song on an album that's been out-of-print, then everybody sort of relied on file sharing for that.

But then the (record) companies came in and started to say, well, this is thiefdom. So there are brilliant possibilities, but the smoke settling and the dust clearing is a five-year picture.

Q: Just curious: How do you find and buy music now?

Chuck D: For me, I have offline, online and midline. Midline is that you can order through the Web. Online means that you can go to places such as TheOrchard.com, which is an online retail shop which gets into all online retail outlets such as the Wal-Marts and the Rhapsodies and the iTunes.