FTA: But the music industry is still trying to recover from piracy's heyday. Last year, total music industry revenue was about $15 billion worldwide, well below the 1999 peak of $38 billion.
Ouch - think about that, seeing >60% of your industry revenue go up in smoke. And please don't give me the old line about labels ripping off artists - big labels did, somewhat, but they weren't nearly as bad as Courtney Love made out, and meantime tons of small labels went to the wall because they didn't have the revenue cushion that the big ones did. I was a DJ back in the 90s (and I was probably spending a couple of thousand $ a year on music at the time) and it was a much more economically diverse industry pre-Napster. I can't say I regard the commodification of music as an improvement, really.
As for the indie labels - it's a massive shame, I agree, although many adapted and survived. But I'd argue indie artists have it easier than before - you can record and distribute an album for basically the cost of your time these days. (Although, that in itself is both a good, and bad thing.)
https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-ar...
The major labels (certainly), controlled the distribution channels (and I know a lot of indies used a major for distribution, when it was all physical media) - and they don't, so much, anymore. My point was they chose to fight the future rather than adapt to it, so other people came and stole the new business. There's what - 4 big labels? Had they come together they could have sewn up digital distribution before other companies (iTunes, then Spotify, etc etc) came and stole their revenues. Sure music industry profits may be down, but that money is probably just being made elsewhere.
I guess change is hard. The 50 something record exec behind the big desk in the year 1999 who's never sent an email, getting told by some 20 year old kid in a winamp t-shirt that 'MP3s are the future' is probably going to laugh him out the office. When he realises people are taking music for free, in bulk, his reaction is(/was??!) probably - that's stealing, not 'how can we monetize this?'
1970s and 1980s era record labels would sign an artist, throw development money at him or her, give them a fair try in the market with at least a couple of albums, and only drop them if they were going nowhere.
Then the emphasis shifted to the show-me-the-money insta-hit act, and manufactured waxwork acts like Justin Bieber. Music got a lot less interesting, and people found other things to do with their time. So sales crashed.
There's actually more good music being made than ever, but most of it lives on microlabels only hipsters know about, and the people making it all have day jobs. Even some of the better known names in dance/trance have day jobs.
This is bad, because some of them are very talented and would easily have made a career out of it 30 years ago.
Pop literally ate itself. The pirates just picked over the bones.