Michael Lopez has some thoughts on the future of the music industry. Basically, Michael thinks that the RIAA's legal wranglings right now are actually the beginnings of death-spasms, and that performance is going to replace recording as music's coin-of-the-realm. I'm not sure how much I agree with him.
Forecasting the future is always incredibly tricky business. (Remember, if my predictions had come about, Jim Kelly's hand would be sporting three Super Bowl rings right now.) I do think that performance will see something of a comeback, but I'm not at all convinced it's going to replace recording as the musicians' main source of income. I take it as pretty much of a given in human nature that, given a new thing X, someone will figure out a way to make money on X. And since recorded music isn't going anywhere -- what's being hashed out right now is the how of recorded music, not its existence -- eventually we're going to end up paying for it, somehow. Recorded music will not be free, because nothing that has ever been free has ever stayed free, and I see little reason to expect music to buck that trend.
And if it's not free, I can't imagine the musicians sitting idly by while others make money on their work.
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
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