I quite frankly, disagree. The artist, who embraced and grew up on the new fora, earns more than what he/she could have ever done via label-sponsor-plastic route.

In fact some of the well known artists of today are artists only because of the new fora. It's no more like Joe needs to know the big-daddy before he/she could even release some good music.

The artist may earn more, but I'm talking about the overall size of the industry.

This concern is only even possibly valid if you limit your conception of "the industry" to the bubble-gum pop music industry. In classical music, in jazz, in various more creative fields of music which have more readily and flexibly adopted new models of promotion and distribution, the market is definitely still out there for great artists to succeed.

If you're "a band" and hoping for one of the five^H^H^H^Hfour^H^H^H^Hthree remaining big labels to hand you a career on a silver platter like in the 80s, then yeah, you might be fucked.

See my response to rflrob.

I believe this is how it should be. Most popular music today is mass produced by rather untalented people. I wouldn't even call them artists. They assemble components into something that works. Much like a programmer. But are programmers labelled as artists?

Music from an artist is generally produced from an internal artistic drive. These mass produced tracks are simply made to make money. They cause the industry to be inflated because they probably wouldn't have become successful or even have been made without huge amounts of backing capital.

In other words, if the value of the industry was based on artistic merits, how much do you think it would be valued at?

I don't think cultural elitism or musical hipsterdom is a useful response. There's major label music that easily matches the artistic merit of anything you could name, and while it largely would have existed with or without major label support, it would not have reached as many people or received the same production values.

>cultural elitism or musical hipsterdom is a useful response

I think you've misinterpreted me. Unless you're telling me that people who can't even sing a live concert should be paid millions to sing. These are people that are generally considered musicians but often can't play an instrument, write their own songs, or even sing without software assistance. If we pared down the people who get paid to be musicians to the ones that do one of the above, how many would be left?

Most of them, easily. Don't take tired stereotypes of pop singers like Britney Spears or Justin Bieber and assume they're 90% of the major label output, or even 90% of the artists who get paid well.

I never said that Pop is 90% of sales, but you call me an elitist and then refuse to look up facts. I think you're lying to your self about the quality of music in the industry.

TOP TEN SELLING DIGITAL ARTISTS (Based on Digital Track sales from 7/04/2004-1/02/2011)

Artist

Units Sold 1 Taylor Swift 34,269,000 2 Black Eyed Peas 33,831,000 3 Rihanna 33,673,000 4 Eminem 33,279,000 5 Lady Gaga 29,311,000 6 Kanye West 25,343,000 7 Beyonce 25,136,000 8 Nickelback 23,919,000 9 Michael Jackson 23,218,000 10. Katy Perry 22,574,000

Do we necessarily care about the overall size of the industry? When I listen to music, I care more about the composer and musicians than the guy who writes the contracts. If more artists are able to make money producing good quality music sold at a reasonable price to the consumer, then the music industry as a whole has done a good job, whether the industry comprises 100% artists or not.

Well, there's the producers and the engineers and record studios and studio equipment manufacturers, and they all provide something of value, indirectly, in producing good quality music.