Music in Abundance

So "finding a business model" will no more be a problem for musicians in the digital age than it was in the analogue one. I read the book, wrote the post, made the SlideShare, been there, done that, continued to beat the horse long after it was dead. The bottom line being that institutions and approaches will change, but the big picture for the vast majority of musicians will not.

Economics student though I may be, this blog is not really supposed to be just about business models and institutions. It is supposed to be about culture. So what does all this tell us about where music, as an art form, is going?

When you talk about power laws, about a tiny minority making the majority of the money in an industry, it all sounds so stark and unjust. But from your perspective or mine, it need not be so.

To be blunt, I don't really care which musicians are or are not making money. All I care about is how easy it is to get music that I like, and how easy it is to share it with my friends and family.

Moreover, things are not completely dismal for musicians, either. You aren't very likely to make money by playing or writing music, but that's always been the case. The real change is that the cost of the equipment for recording music has plummeted, and the internet has made it possible for people to hear it that otherwise might never have been able to.

In a way I face something similar here at Cloud Culture. Much like music, it has never been easy to make a living by writing. I love to write, however; and even if I don't have an enormous audience, it is far larger than the zero people that would read the unpublished works I would write in an age before digital technology.

Those who love to make music can do so, record it, and share it cheaply and easily. Because so many more people will be putting out music, there will be a lot more music to listen to. Change may not be obvious from the perspective of how many musicians will make real money. But change will be dramatic for those who love the art form. There will be music in abundance, to enjoy and to serve as inspiration for yet more music.

To that end, there's another book that I really ought to get around to reading...