The real money in music will be in live performance - which has been the case for a while for many bands anyway - it's only been relatively recently that Big Music has found wanna-be artists who are dumb enough to let them take much of a cut of their live revenues.
I think we can look forward to a really fragmented music scene - similar to the alternative/indy scene in the early nineties, when there was a lot of stuff about, but when people tended only to stick with what they listened to, and not cross over much.
And yeah, some musicians will be upset about this - I doubt that many bands into the future will ever make the kind of money that the Rolling Stones/Madonna/U2 have made(though they wouldn't under Big Music anyway) - on the up side, there's the potoential for a lot more bands to make some kind of reasonable living.
I agree with your point about Apple's total solution (though I still think it's relevant that the sofware is still apparently 'free') - however, Apple's irritating habit of selling updates to OSX once a year mitigates this to an extent. To stay up to date, you have to purchase software, and this is well known. By doing this, they're actually putting a real value on their OS.
Microsoft, however, only has themselves to blame.
I think pirating of OS's and major software is something that Microsoft (and Apple to a lesser extent) have done to themselves.
By bundling sotware into their machines at point of sale to preserve their monopoly, they've effectively taught the average end user that software is free - if you don't see the price, there isn't one, right?
So the home user becomes resistant to paying for upgrades to their OS and standard applications.
Now, their bodgy business model requires DRM to protect it. Where's the surprise in this?
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The real money in music will be in live performance - which has been the case for a while for many bands anyway - it's only been relatively recently that Big Music has found wanna-be artists who are dumb enough to let them take much of a cut of their live revenues.
I think we can look forward to a really fragmented music scene - similar to the alternative/indy scene in the early nineties, when there was a lot of stuff about, but when people tended only to stick with what they listened to, and not cross over much.
And yeah, some musicians will be upset about this - I doubt that many bands into the future will ever make the kind of money that the Rolling Stones/Madonna/U2 have made(though they wouldn't under Big Music anyway) - on the up side, there's the potoential for a lot more bands to make some kind of reasonable living.
I agree with your point about Apple's total solution (though I still think it's relevant that the sofware is still apparently 'free') - however, Apple's irritating habit of selling updates to OSX once a year mitigates this to an extent. To stay up to date, you have to purchase software, and this is well known. By doing this, they're actually putting a real value on their OS. Microsoft, however, only has themselves to blame.
I think pirating of OS's and major software is something that Microsoft (and Apple to a lesser extent) have done to themselves. By bundling sotware into their machines at point of sale to preserve their monopoly, they've effectively taught the average end user that software is free - if you don't see the price, there isn't one, right? So the home user becomes resistant to paying for upgrades to their OS and standard applications. Now, their bodgy business model requires DRM to protect it. Where's the surprise in this?