If there’s one thing the music industry is afraid of, it would be that one day Britney Spears will quit rhythmically moaning "ooh," "mmm," and "baby," for a new career developing a celebrity forearm hair removal product that works much like flypaper.

If there’s another thing they’re worried about, it would have to be a product called Napster that somehow allows people to listen to music without paying for it. That’s what radio used to be for, but few stations play music anymore. Most of the time, they just talk about sex. When they do play music, they play the same songs over and over and over again, because music is expensive and they can’t afford a CD changer. A typical music set on a soft rock station, for example, may be the theme from Friends, followed by the theme from Titanic, followed by the theme from Friends.

With Napster, though, you’re supposedly able to use the Internet to download for free virtually any song you want. Record companies say there are several problems with this. For one, nobody will buy music anymore and their profits will fall. Two, gangsta rappers will only be able to afford pants that actually fit. And three, the Internet will be so busy handling illegal copies of music, it won’t have time to deliver e-mail chain letters.

Music piracy is nothing new. It actually began whenever records were invented. Copying records, though, was a very labor intensive process that involved a magnifying glass, a sewing needle, and a blank Fruit Roll-Up snack product.

Next came cassettes, which were even easier to copy. (Eight-track tapes didn’t pose a piracy problem because everyone was too embarrassed to ask friends for free copies of the Bay City Rollers album.) All you had to do is find a blank tape and remember to hit the high-speed dubbing button.

Now that there’s Napster, all you need to do is buy a fast computer with a compatible sound card and digital CD-ROM drive, making sure that they’re wired together through the ASTPI bus. Then you need to connect to the Internet to download an illegal CD ripping program, and an MP3 encoding program and Napster.

Finally, you curse at AOL and try again to connect to the Internet, put your CD in the drive and start over because you forgot to turn the power on. It’s probably best just to find a college student to come over and do it for you. With the modern liberal arts programs, they’re the only ones who have time to figure it out.

Even though this process is somewhat complex, it’s still considered better than the traditional way of getting music. That involves going to a record store and then leaving in disgust because the clerk is too busy showing his or her nipple rings to point you in the direction of the new Tony Bennett collection.

The result is that it’s much harder these days for music companies to make money. Sure their profits are still growing, but it’s because they’ve taken drastic cost-cutting steps particularly involving lyrics.

Record companies significantly cut back on lyrics in the ‘60s. The Beatles, needing to fill some time on one of their records, just sang "na, na, na, na n’na na" over and over again for eight minutes — it’s all the record company could afford! — and called the track "Hey Jude." And to stretch the dollar even further, the group Steam recycled the lyrics into a second song called "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye."

Music piracy is much more of a problem now, creating a new genre of music that doesn’t even have lyrics. It’s called mainstream alternative or something, and consists boys in their late teens wailing as if their prostates are being probed by plumbing interns with arch welders.

Who knows what they’re going to have to do next to boost profits. So it’s time for all of us to band together and help our friends in the music industry. Let’s rush to the record store right now. Let’s max out our credit cards — even if they don’t have the new Tony Bennett live album. We’ll just buy "Araagggggh, That BURNS!" instead. I hear it has half of a good dance beat.