But, then, there's South By Southwest, the confluence of film and music festival and brainstorming conference that just concluded in Austin, Texas. SXSW, as it’s come to be known, began in 1987 as one of a number of indie rock showcases but is now one of the highest-profile examples of the 21st-century music industry. While there are certainly representatives at SXSW from the four mastodon mega-conglomerates that now house the major record companies, the vast majority of acts there, both young and old, represent the new alternatives for making it in music today.

The boomer audience knows about the recent success of Paul McCartney and of The Eagles with new albums marketed outside the normal channels (McCartney through Starbucks' Hear Music, The Eagles through Wal-Mart). But the new technology is, naturally, more the domain of young musicians. In the age of Pro Tools, it’s possible to make a professional-quality recording in one’s living room and, then, put the track up on MySpace and give it away free as a means of getting known. The track could well end up getting the attention of Internet and/or satellite radio or be placed into a commercial or a movie soundtrack.

The act can merchandise its music through its own website or through iTunes or the other digital music domains or sell music and t-shirts and such at club gigs or, yes, festivals.(There were some 2,000 bands who were seen at one venue or another during SXSW.) In other words, they don’t need the record companies or terrestrial radio.

Now, admittedly, there are more acts out there looking to make it than ever before and virtually no band or individual artist is going to quickly make a lot of money and most will be seen by far fewer people over the course of a year than see a typical episode of American Idol. But an act now has so many more ways to get its music out to the public than there were even a decade ago and none of them involve selling one’s soul to a record company. That’s bad news for a mainstream record industry that is seeing number one albums with all-time-low sales figures because CD sales have plummeted and even the digital domain versions of those albums aren’t selling, with individual tracks the overwhelming consumer choice via iTunes. So it only makes sense for acts of all ages to use alternative means of exposure to get their music directly to the people.

In fact, when one thinks of this year's Hall Of Fame inductees, which of them, if they were just starting out in the business, would have been the most likely to take advantage of the new technology? Without a doubt, it would have been Madonna. Oh sure, she would have done a certain amount of networking, um, the old-fashioned way. But, given her flair for self-promotion, you know she would have had a MySpace page and likely would have placed videos of herself on YouTube. She probably would have been too cutting-edge to make it past the audition stage on American Idol but, given the large hip-hop/dance presence along with the rock bands at SXSW, a young Madonna certainly would have made the scene there.