Music Industry Suffering Because Their Music Sucks
Via Slashdot, here’s a lenthy and insightful article on the music industry from that pillar of respectability, the Economist. It features this tasty quote:
According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy. No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part.
A recurring theme throughout the article is the growing power of independent music companies. This immediately reminded me of Chris Anderson’s excellent article on The Long Tail of the entertainment industry.
On a related note, Freedom to Tinker has some interesting thoughts on Bittorrent’s reciprocal nature.
