Ed Christman, in Billboard, nicely focuses in on the nitty gritty of the music business in this column. There are huge forces at work disrupting the industry, of course, but there’s also more mundane issues, like retail strategy:

While we are on the topic of Black Friday, it is frustrating to report that 2007 will mark the third year in a row where the DVD industry has outmaneuvered the music industry, according to retailers. But there’s more bad news for labels: Merchants say the videogame industry is out-hustling the record labels, too.

Music merchants say that, other than rap titles, this year’s holiday selling season release schedule is weaker than last year’s—and the rock slate is especially underwhelming. Meanwhile, the movie studios have or will unleash “Transformers,” “Spider-Man 3,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and “Shrek the Third” for the holidays, says Sue Bryan, who heads up J&R’s music and movies area. And Trans World Entertainment VP of movies and videogames Mark Higgins says there will be at least 16 movies coming out on DVD that each generated $100 million or more at the box office during fourth-quarter 2007. “It started on Oct. 16 with ‘Transformers,’ and we have one event title every week through the rest of the year,” Higgins says.

Of course, the industry can’t win; the problem in previous years was retailers’ complaining that the companies were concentrating superstar releases in the last quarter and letting stores shift for themselves the other nine months…