Re:"The mighty music business is in free fall," so Sony trie...
by geebee on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @12:38PM
(#50021)
I really liked that article, and it really got me thinking about the software industry as well.
If you liked this article, there are a couple of good articles you might want to read (just use google, easy to find them).
1. "The way the music died" - this was a PBS show about the decline of the music industry. One theory advanced is that as lawyers and accountants (without much real interest in music) took over the studios, the product suffered. It took a while, but eventually, that caught up with the industry.
2. A salon.com article titled: "the greatest week in rock in history" - about a week that a truly remarkable line-up of top-selling albums. It's amazing that this much talent was compressed into the same moment in history.
Anyway, the reason I dig reading about this is that it is a cautionary tale for the technology industry. It's very tempting to put suits in charge of software, but in the end, it tends to fail.
The main difference: the music industry had such a good catalog of existing product (a led zeppelin album is still good to listen to today) that they could limp along without innovating for quite some time. Whereas most software companies that stop innovating will be dead quickly. Yeah, monopoly positions can hold reality at bay for a while, but reality always wins in the end.
If you liked this article, there are a couple of good articles you might want to read (just use google, easy to find them).
1. "The way the music died" - this was a PBS show about the decline of the music industry. One theory advanced is that as lawyers and accountants (without much real interest in music) took over the studios, the product suffered. It took a while, but eventually, that caught up with the industry.
2. A salon.com article titled: "the greatest week in rock in history" - about a week that a truly remarkable line-up of top-selling albums. It's amazing that this much talent was compressed into the same moment in history.
Anyway, the reason I dig reading about this is that it is a cautionary tale for the technology industry. It's very tempting to put suits in charge of software, but in the end, it tends to fail.
The main difference: the music industry had such a good catalog of existing product (a led zeppelin album is still good to listen to today) that they could limp along without innovating for quite some time. Whereas most software companies that stop innovating will be dead quickly. Yeah, monopoly positions can hold reality at bay for a while, but reality always wins in the end.