Lefty, consider what you are able to do now with just a little software. What would it have taken 20 years ago to do something like that? Now project a few more years into the future. The trend is for costs of all of these things to come down, and control to be decentralized.
I'm sure it will never be the case that producing music is as cheap as writing a book, but it doesn't have to be. All that has to happen is for professional-quality music recording -- separate from distribution -- to be within most people's reach. We are surely not far from that now. If you could partner with other musicians, so that you didn't have to hire professional accompaniment; i.e., if you were recording as a band not as an individual, how close could you come in your home studio to professional studio-quality? How much would you have to spend to bridge that gap? OTOH, suppose you wanted to record your work with your band in a studio -- bearing in mind that you wouldn't have to pay the musicians a dime, only the studio itself -- how much would it cost to record a half hour or so of good music? What if you and your band members were splitting that cost? Suppose there were four of you. Would that be within reach?
I understand that the sales model will always be at least a little different, but as things continue to decentralize through advances in technology, the control of the record companies will decline and record companies themselves will become dinosaurs headed for extinction, nothing surer.
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