[Michael Wolff has some interesting comments on this in New York Magazine:]
Facing the Music
Rock stars and music-industry execs once ruled the earth, but now -- in terms of size and profit margins -- the music industry is becoming the book business (minus the literacy).
By Michael Wolff
... The Internet is music consumerism run amok, resulting not only in billions of dollars of lost sales but in an endless bifurcation of taste. The universe fragmented into sub-universes, and then sub-sub-universes. The music industry, which depends on large numbers of people with similar interests for its profit margins, now had to deal with an ever-growing numbers of fans with increasingly diverse and eccentric interests.
It is hard to think of a more profound business crisis. You've lost control of the means of distribution, promotion, and manufacturing. You've lost quality control -- in some sense, there's been a quality-control coup. You've lost your basic business model -- what you sell has become as free as oxygen.
It's a philosophical as well as a business crisis -- which compounds the problem, because the people who run the music business are not exactly philosophers.
"They're thugs," says a former high-ranking music exec of my acquaintance, who is no shrinking violet himself....
[Full text, http://www.nymag.com/page.cfm?page_id=6099]
Carl
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