Latest example: Borders Group (BGP), the struggling book chain, has cut its music inventory by 30 percent in the last year, the company said. Music now occupies about seven percent of its floorspace, and the space it used to take up has been given over to higher-margin products like children’s books.

Borders makes up a relatively small portion of U.S. music sales, but most big retailers have been doing the same thing for more than a year. If you don’t believe me, try to find the CD section next time you visit a Target (TGT) or Best Buy (BBY) this month.

The big stores will embrace individual albums–if they have an exclusive, like Best Buy’s deal with Guns N’ Roses, or Wal-Mart’s (WMT) recent AC/DC promotion. (That’s Best Buy’s GNR promotion, pictured above. Lonely, isn’t it?) But beyond that, they are basically telling music shoppers, who bought some $7 billion worth of discs last year, to take their business elsewhere.

[Image Credit: Idolator]

This move should temporarily boost traffic at iMeem, which finds itself competing for the ability to premier new releases with rival music services like iLike, MySpace, Rhapsody, et al. Last week, for instance, MySpace got bragging rights over “Chinese Democracy,” the sort-of-long-awaited album from Guns N’ Roses.

But it’s unclear whether these premieres actually help Britney or her label, Sony’s (SNE) Jive: Few of the visitors to MySpace’s GNR page stuck around to listen to the whole album, and hordes of GNR fans don’t seem to have flooded Best Buy (BBY) stores, which have an exclusive on the disc.

But who cares? That’s tomorrow’s problem. For now: Free Britney Spears!