Music, Creativity, and Free in 2010
From Zanecorpwiki
Work in progress.
Had the opportunity to speak to some very interesting music people today... a music lawyer and talent manager. The following thoughts are all my own, I just wanted to throw out that others helped to catalyze them.
- It's kind of weird that 10 years after Napster, we end up with iTunes accounting for 95%+ of the digital music sales, and it's really nothing more than the old music model applied to the digital age. Higher volume and slimmer margins. At the end of the day, it looks like the market is going to settle at about the same size it was before, with consumers and artists both winning. Not weird because its unexpected, but weird because everyone freaked out about digital music, but really not much has changed. We're on the same path we were always on (more convenience, more choice, less control) with no real revolution or seismic shift. Just a lot of fuss by some scared record execs (who did end up losing, but that was inevitable).
- In my opinion, this directly set the stage for The Google Gamble and mash-ups. If they'd just fucking sold their shit themselves the way the market demanded they do so, the big labels would probably be getting a bigger slice of the pie and the creative counter-culture would never have gotten near as much steam. They *really* shot themselves in the foot on this one. A great case of cosmic justice, though. Supposed capitalist free marketeers get fucked when they go against the free market, just as they should.
- I would dearly love to know the number of published music in 2000-2009 vs. 1990-1999 vs 1980-1989.
