Nothing Will Take Its Place
Clay Shirky has a very good post that is streaking its way through the internet about the demise of the newspaper industry. Replace everytime he says ‘newspaper’ with ‘record label’ and you essentially have a similar argument for the music industry. Just two of the great quotes:
Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
And:
The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.
Are we going to miss the record labels? My guess is probably. Getting lots of money for making music always seemed like a pretty good deal to me. And what will take its place? To Clay’s point, nothing. It’s not that there ought to be a recorded music industry. It’s that there was. And soon there won’t be. That’s all.
