music bubble
Here is a
more-thoughtful-than-most article in New York magazine about what's happening in the music business. I'm fond of it because it makes some points
I'm always making:
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.
It ends with an interesting assertion:
Rock and roll is just an anomaly. While for a generation or two it created a go-go industry -- the youthquake -- it is unreasonable to expect that anything so transforming can remain a permanent condition. To a large degree, the music industry is, then, a fluke. A bubble. Finally the bubble burst.
Of course, the bubble
hasn't quite burst yet, and the music industry is
pulling out all the stops to prop up its failing business model. But,
like all bubbles, it can't last forever. This doesn't mean that rock and roll will go away -- after all, we still have tulips, railroads, personal computers, and even a few dot-com companies. But I do believe that -- no matter how much kicking and screaming the RIAA does -- there's soon going be a lot less money to be made in the music biz.