In his book Playback: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines, and Money, Mark Coleman makes an interesting statement about how the development of radio affected the record industry:

Record sales hit 110 million in 1922; ten years later, the figure had fallen to six million. Phonographs and records were no longer advertised. Radio suffered, since many stations secretly relied on recorded music, which infuriated recording musicians and their unions. The decline in disc sales ultimately meant fewer records to choose from, and the broadcast selection had always been spotty. All of a sudden, it got worse: you heard the same popular song nine or ten times a day. Repetition ruled the airwaves.

Much like today, record sales then were not just affected by radio, since the stock market crashed in 1929 and the resulting depression hit every industry hard. But as Coleman points out, "radio was still free." Similarly, the fact that file-sharing networks today aren't siphoning off that many purchasers doesn't mean that they wouldn't in the long haul, after the "free music" mentality truly took root. People listened to radio instead of records because it was free, and people would download music if the same were true (especially since music downloads offer something that radio doesn't, which is choice). But the developers of file sharing networks and digital pirates of all kinds are really riding on the backs of those who produced the music (or movie) being transferred.

Content is still king. All the P2P networks in the world and all the fancy audio or video players on the market aren't worth much unless there's something to play. As a result, the content creators are entitled to be compensated for their work. Solutions were found in the dispute between radio and the record industry, and solutions are slowly evolving in the digital enviornment as well (which, as most observers note, is the way the industry must ultimately head). But those solutions will involve some method of paying the content creators - and that's as it should be, whether it be for the disc or for the download.

** Author's Note: for those wondering what on earth the title of this post is about, in March of 1958 a spokesman for Columbia Records gave a speech pilloring the radio industry for playing records for rabble: "the eight to fourteen year olds, the pre-shave crowd that makes up 12% of the population and zero percent of its buying power, once you eliminate the ponytail ribbons, Popsicles, and peanut brittle." Yeah, never say the record industry doesn't have its finger on the pulse of America.

This post originally appeared at Walloworld, where the author writes about, well, all kinds of really compelling stuff.