Death to the Shiny Disc http://tinyurl.com/686q9gl
Ethan Kaplan was recently heading up Warner Music’s technology efforts, particularly their digital side. His insider take is hard to set aside, despite its bottom line that the highly profitable monopolies have gone away, and that’s a good thing. Ethan puts it exceptionally well, so I’m only going to make one quote. Read the whole article if you care about the future of media.
And for a lot of people, longing for a time long gone is more comfortable, and easier, and more profitable in the selfish sense than reducing salary down to a dollar and going for broke to change. It’s much easier to keep the cow alive and fed than to kill it. Killing it is sad, scary and irreversible.
But die it must. And it will be a freeing day once it happens. The music industry won’t be the same and it won’t be as big. Many other sacred cows — label imprints, multiple subsidiary companies with independent staffs, multiple offices, separate A&R staffs, to name but a few — might die. But it will be an industry, and a business and revert back to being about talent and artistry instead of fear. About discovery and passion rather than past tense myopia. An actual business rather than a hollow nostalgic simulation.