Quote:
Originally Posted by Deepwaters
I keep coming back to this, and I do recognize the differences, but exactly the same thing is happening in publishing. Falling sales and profits over the past decade or more have destroyed such courage as ever existed in the industry. Now, only old established writers or musicians who can almost be guaranteed to sell well can obtain an outlet in the traditional way. It's the kiss of death, because the only way to reverse the decline is to take risks and offer the new and different, but the industries have become so cautious and timid that they have lost the ability to do this. The consolidation of control into a few giant companies is not the cause of this, I think, but a parallel symtom.
Ultimately, the only way out of the bind is going to be the removal of the middleman.
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I agree that what you say is definitely going on now. But also what caused a big wave of consolidation in the music industry was the CD. When the CD started to catch on, record companies began releasing all their old catalogs on the new digital format. They sold like crazy and there were no artist development, recording or promotional costs. It was easy money and no risk.
Companies like Sony got wind of this and wanted to get in on this easy money, so they bought up many of the record companies. The situation eventually ran its course and more effort had to go back into new artists and music, but now there was a lot of non-music people running the show. I think that contributed to where we are today, and these are the middlemen between the artist and the public.