| I largely agree with the article, but also agree with your conclusions. >Instead, the "competition" is by delivering Rihanna for free by infringing copyrights. This is a problem for Rihanna and a Maserati problem once a musician become famous, but the author states this article does not apply to "the majors or rock stars." The challenge faced by the indies is as old as the music industry, they have merely been exacerbated by technology. Even before the decline of music sales, the main challenge for an indie musician was discovery. I think we have a confirmation bias about the past. There have always been unsuccessful musicians, but we forget they existed. Starving artist is not a new cliche. Have people rejected indie music or is there something else behind superstar popularity? Conventional thinking is that free music makes it easier to get discovered (but harder to monetize, once discovered) because it cost nothing for consumers to try new music. It turns out that there is so much content/competition out there now (because music cost less to produce + free distribution), consumers have choice overload. This makes it harder for people to try indie music. Music is cultural, so what is popular follows the same power-law dynamics as social networks (in fact, it is driven by social networks). Hence, what's popular becomes more popular. Agree that the fact that the product has a zero marginal cost does not mean people are unwilling to pay. The entire software industry is built upon a business model of building a product with high production costs and zero marginal cost. |