Rojas, founder of Engadget, had some interesting things to say about how digital media is dismantling the music industry status quo:
The fact of the matter is that the majors thrived in an era of inefficiency, when there was value in physically producing and distributing music. There isn’t any value in that any more (or at least, it’s very quickly declining), and there’s no good way for labels to compete given that the cost structure of the business was designed around physical releases.
He argues that not only did the major labels take too long to start selling music online, but also pissed off consumers by wrapping music in digital rights management once they did. This only hastened DRM cracks and the rise of p2p filesharing. Rojas writes,
A generation of kids got used to the idea that music was free, and given the infinite amount of freely — if illegally — available music out there, it was hard to argue with the facts on the ground. Music seemed free, so it was free.
Sadly, independent labels are disproportionately burdened by this effect that was spurred on by major label greed, inefficiency, and inability to innovate. It also reflects changing notions about how we think about the creation of, and access to, information and culture in the digital environment.
Check out the full article here.
