The fireworks at the National Association of Recording Merchandisers' 51st annual convention may have little to do with music and everything to do with business.

The members of NARM, who will meet June 7-9 at the San Diego Marriott & Marina, will likely encounter an increase in both contentiousness and uneasy new alliances as the increasingly dominant world of digital music goes head-to-head with the brick-and-mortar retail shops, whose ranks have been decimated in recent years.

"This is a last gasp by a lot of people who are not admitting self-defeat," charged Gaylord Fields, the senior editor for Spinner.com, the self-billed "tastemaker rock music site" of Internet giant AOL.

Not so, countered Paul Russe, the manager of Off The Record, an independent record store in San Diego.

"I think there will always be record stores," Russe said. "Otherwise, it's like saying there won't be any bookstores because everything in print will be a digital download. Digital is just a convenience. And anyone who loves music will always gravitate toward record stores."

Indeed. But there are fewer and fewer stores for people to gravitate to, no matter how dedicated they are to music.

Between 2003 and last year, an estimated 3,000 independent record stores went out of business nationwide, along with such major chains as Wherehouse and Tower Records (the latter of which grossed $1 billion in 1996). According to NARM statistics, there are now about 2,000 indie stores in the country. That's 10,000 less than in 1992.

The dramatic attrition of stores selling CDs and other forms of recorded music is mirrored by the downward spiral of album sales, which have dropped 45 percent over the past nine years. Slightly more than 785 million albums were sold in 2000, compared with 535.4 million last year.

The increasing popularity of downloading individual songs, at 99 cents a tune, has also hastened the decline of albums. To further compound matters in this age of iPods and ring-tones, an entire generation has grown up that regards the downloading of music for free — whether legally or (more often) not — almost as a constitutional right.

Small wonder, then, that the stakes are unusually high for NARM, whose members account for an estimated 90 percent of the annual sales in the $8 billion U.S. music market. Its constituency now includes not just record companies and independently owned stores, but also digital music retailers, mobile phone companies, music video game makers, social networking sites, and an array of other high-tech companies whose goals often appear to be at odds with those of conventional, mom-and-pop record stores.

Or are they?

"If we're all going to succeed and maintain the music business as a whole, it's incumbent on all of us to think as a group," said Ed Ruth, who is the director of digital content and programming for Verizon. He became a NARM board member last year.

"With Verizon and a few others coming on board at NARM," Ruth continued, "the focus has shifted to hybrid formats that help bridge the divide between physical and digital (music) and introduce new concepts to consumers."

These new concepts include digital album cards, which give album buyers a code that enables them to download the album's songs and booklet, plus videos and bonus tracks not available on the CD version. There are also slotMusic cards that let consumers instantly listen to albums without being dependent on a PC or an Internet connection by inserting the preloaded slotMusic card into a phone or music player.

"And we're looking at other ways in which we can bundle music offerings with our mobile phones when they're sold," Ruth said.

Such approaches don't sit well with some record-store owners, who regard digital music companies in any form as the enemy, commercially and aesthetically, not allies.

"Well, bundling is the key to what? Their further takeover of the music industry?" mused NARM member Paul Epstein, the co-owner of Twist N Shout, one of Denver's largest indie record stores.

"I suppose it's appropriate. But is it good that digital is overtaking the physical world? In my opinion, it's the worst thing that ever happened to our culture. The long-term impact (of digitalization) on art and the way we communicate as human beings is devastating."

These conflicting points of view are nothing new to Jim Donio, the president of the New Jersey-based NARM. He began working for the not-for-profit trade association 21 years ago, when record companies and retailers alike were flush with new success (and soaring profits) as the result of the very lucrative ascent of CDs.

Today, with CD sales plummeting, NARM faces challenges that would have been unthinkable only a decade ago, with or without our current national recession. NARM also finds itself with a revamped board of directors that includes conspicuously fewer record-store chains and more new digital-music forces, including iTunes, Amazon.com and Nokia.

"Are these easy times? No," Donio acknowledged. "Can we broad-brush a rosy picture for all the businesses involved in the music-content delivery community? No. That would be ill-advised.

"But I'm particularly bullish, because this is a moment in time that really inspires innovation and those fabulous, amazing, up-to-the-moment new ideas that come about."

Others are less optimistic.

"I hate to be so pessimistic but I don't see anyone coming up with a plan to save record retailers in any way, and there really can't be," said Spinner.com's Fields.

"It's a different mind-set now, where people are either expecting music for free or very cheap. They also are not willing to buy 13 bad songs on an album to get one good song and 12 songs they're not interested in. So artists, producers and retailers have all become complicit in why the record industry is on its last legs. There won't be any record stores in five years."

Record companies and artists have responded by offering multiple versions of their releases in order to maximize potential profits in a dwindling market.

Due out next month, the new Dave Matthews Band album, "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King," will come in a regular, 13-song CD version, a deluxe version with a DVD documentary and a boxed set with four extra songs, lithographs, a 40-page photo book and more. The special iTunes version of the album includes additional video and bonus songs, while the version the band is selling on its website will include a bonus live CD as well.

Still, that may not be enough to turn the tide.

"It's more of a singles market now and we just have to be in the business of giving customers what they want," said Dilyn Radakovitz, who — with her husband — owns the six-store Dimple records chain in Sacramento, Calif.

"Plus, every week we match Best Buy and Target with every new release that comes out, for a two-week period. If that means pricing an album at $9.99 per copy that cost me $12, well, that's the way it is."

Few indie record stores can afford such steep discounts, which is another reason their days may be numbered.

"The reality is that, whether you're a physical or digital retailer, it's our job to deliver the experience consumers expect," Verizon's Ruth said. "And to hang on to physical models, 'just because,' isn't a good reason."

Perhaps not. But with vinyl albums making an unexpected resurgence, indie stores and even some record labels have been given a new infusion of hope.

"There will always be physical retail stores, the way there have always been vinyl records," said Robert Levine, the executive editor of Billboard, the music industry's leading weekly trade magazine.

"The question, really, is: Will these stores serve more than a niche audience? Not long ago, the biggest problem used to be that you could get music (illegally) for free. Now, the problem is: If you wanted to buy a CD, where would you buy it? You go to Best Buy, Target or Wal-Mart. And those companies are cutting back on floor space for CDs quite a bit, which is what's really killing the business. That's why indie stores play a vital function in breaking new bands and exposing people to new music."

To find out more about George Varga and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.