Even before the digital/internet sea change, this didn't capture the whole music industry. There were artists who made good money off their recordings either because they DIYd it, or found better labels, or negotiated better deals. None of those paths has ever been easy but before recording revenue got kneecapped it was more available.
But let's say for the sake of argument that's how it worked before the internet. If so, why did we let that level of disruption just replace one set of bad guys with another?
What we should have had instead was what we were on track to have: multiple-scale digital recording retail, Apple to Bandcamp to individual artist site to local indie collective as point of sale. Charge whatever artist and buyer choose and can clear a transaction at, they keep 70-90%. True streaming, some with a format, some algorithmically customized for both audio wallpaper and music discovery... but in every case not user-programmed because that's how you justify the difference between the ridiculous fractional cent payouts and recordings.
That's the world we could have tomorrow if the policy was there.
More likely, everybody's too used to a decade of having the privilege of an unlimited basically free recording buffet that Spotify used to cannibalize the industry and we won't do it no matter how it erodes the economics of creation. But we could.
But let's say for the sake of argument that's how it worked before the internet. If so, why did we let that level of disruption just replace one set of bad guys with another?
What we should have had instead was what we were on track to have: multiple-scale digital recording retail, Apple to Bandcamp to individual artist site to local indie collective as point of sale. Charge whatever artist and buyer choose and can clear a transaction at, they keep 70-90%. True streaming, some with a format, some algorithmically customized for both audio wallpaper and music discovery... but in every case not user-programmed because that's how you justify the difference between the ridiculous fractional cent payouts and recordings.
That's the world we could have tomorrow if the policy was there.
More likely, everybody's too used to a decade of having the privilege of an unlimited basically free recording buffet that Spotify used to cannibalize the industry and we won't do it no matter how it erodes the economics of creation. But we could.