Charles Mann takes a spirited look at the future of the recording industry as we know it - it could disappear in the very near future:
- As recently as 10 years ago, the media conglomerates that own record labels regarded them as cash cows - smaller than Hollywood but more reliably profitable. Now all five major labels are either losing money or barely in the black, and the industry's decline is turning into a plunge. In the next year, whether together or separately, the labels will have to set about totally reinventing the way they do business, a horribly difficult task for any institution.
To leap the hurdles posed by digital technology, the industry must find a way to make money selling downloaded music on a per-track basis, allow in-store CD burning, slash recording costs with cheap software and hardware, and change artists' contracts to reflect the new economic reality. Doing any one of these will be next to impossible. Doing all of them would be one of the more amazing turnarounds in business history.
....the ability of Britney to change the hearts and minds of music fans depends on public sympathy.
That sympathy is in short supply. Rightly or wrongly, record companies are detested by politicians (for corrupting youth), by webcasters (for demanding royalties), and by their customers (for inflating prices). Musicians and songwriters are famous for loathing the labels, and many have resisted licensing their songs to MusicNet and pressplay. (Both are under investigation for possible antitrust violations.) Radio and MTV aren't in the industry's corner; the labels, through "independent promotion" programs, effectively have to pay them to broadcast music. And the electronics industry's attitude toward the labels is summed up by an Apple slogan: Rip. Mix. Burn. Which, a music executive once told me, translates into "Fuck you, record labels."
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