And though the industry’s financial outlook is still fuzzy, one thing is certain: No matter who ultimately “wins” the digital music wars - contenders include Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and Pandora - streaming music as the world’s dominant listening method is poised to last far longer than the various ruling periods of MP3s, CDs, and probably even vinyl records.
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In a narrative that’s just as important as the music industry’s downfall, music itself has never been bigger.įrom production to consumption to availability, music has exploded thanks to a series of innovations like Napster, iTunes, BitTorrent, and Spotify. Because while a cab company owner can at least retire early, safe in the knowledge that the world simply moved on from charmingly corrupt old-world Medallion systems and yellow-checkered color schemes, “music” - as long as you leave the word “industry” off the end of it - hasn’t imploded at all.
So dramatic was this disruption that I imagine many in the industry gazing upon what Uber did to the taxi economy with something like envy. Then after the internet came along to disrupt the economy/democratize production/introduce “goatse” to your mom, those revenues deflated, as bubbles inevitably do.Īnd yet, even by the standards of your average digitally driven scorched-earth decline, the cliff atop which the music business once sat was astoundingly high - and its fall astoundingly steep. The narrative is all too familiar by now: Thanks to artificial scarcity and a centralized, one-dimensional production chain, sales of absurdly expensive, purposefully fragile, and frequently unlistenable compact discs reached their peak. In just over a decade, the revenues created by selling music in the U.S. It’s not Taylor’s fault - the situation is simply too dire for one artist to fix alone. Hold on, lemme just check here … yep, the music industry is still a mess. If you believe everything you read, the music industry was “saved” not once but three times in 2015 - first by Taylor Swift, then by Jimmy Iovine and Dr.