Oversupply - culprit behind music industry decline

An interesting opinion piece appeared in the DailyBulletin (http://www.dailybulletin.com/lifestyle/ci_6417477) last week. The author, John Weeks, provided a step-by-step description of how the music industry could save itself from impending doom. His solution...

Cut the supply of new music to an immediate stop.

In other words, don't allow any new music to be created or produced. According to the theory, if people could not get new music, they would start realizing how much they want it and how painful it is to live in a world without new music to "steal". Consumers will then come to their senses and start being happy to pay for artists to produce new music.

We've heard this argument before. It goes something like this:

If pirates keep stealing music instead of paying for it, more and more artists will leave the industry or stop creating new works because they can't make a living from all of the piracy. This will create a huge vacuum where there is almost no new music and what music there is, will be of the poorest quality.

There is one fatal flaw with this dark vision of music's future... Artists are making more than ever before. Why else would big acts like Prince be giving away copies of their CD to get more people out to their live shows? Its because, as Prince puts it, he could care less about the labels making money. Instead, he makes all his money on live performances. If anything, the Long Tail has proved that mass supply of new music is here to stay. Now we just need some better filtering mechanisms.