Some years ago a friend of mine lent me an interesting book called "Noise" by the French economist Jacques Attali (used to be Mitterand's finance minister or some such). It was an interesting history of the economy of music through the ages and how what happened in the production and "selling" of music (and compensation of artists and composers) actually presaged developments in the larger society. For example, certain associations for the licensing of music created during the French Revolution found later organisational reflections in trade unions, etc.
The book was written back in the 80s, so of course digital copies and copyright issues through downloading weren't issues. But one of the weird coincidences for me came when I finished the chapter on the development of the recording process at the turn of the 20th century, and Attali wondering how that would resonate in human history. The next day, the cloning of Dolly the sheep was announced! It makes me wonder how copyright issues these days will play out: will we no longer have the "right" to our own DNA in the future, perhaps?
Interestingly enough, before the advent of affordable means of producing electronic music and software programmes like Logic, Reason, Pro Tools, etc, Attali hypothesised that the production of the music itself would probably start to return to the people and that a lot of "cottage-industry" musical production would spring up. He also suggested that live performance would be revitalised.
Look what's happened: between advances in technology and the failure of the recording industry to capitalise for very long on "home-grown" music like the garage/grunge bands of the 90s, there was a real flowering of technology-based genres, as well as a resurgeance of live performance. These days, with recordings essentially serving as "promotional materials" for bands, musicians are having to look to live performance as their real source of income. As someone who used to make my bones on live performance (and very little if anything even on very successful recordings), I'm all in favour of this. Music was becoming ossified in the 80s, thanks a lot to the whole recording/promotional machine.
The recording industry is killing itself by not moving with the times.
