An Interesting Point About Music Released Between 1999 and 2004

Andrew Dubber is a Professor of Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University.  He brings up an interesting point about all the music that was released from between mid-1999 (when Napster was released into the wild) and 2004 (when we started to get proper digital tools for music).

Between about 1999 and 2004, there was a lot of exceptional music made by a lot of talented artists – many of whom might not have been given the opportunity to record prior to that time. It was an incredibly rich period for music production. Some utterly fantastic records were released.

They may not have had anything like the promotional budget similar acts might have enjoyed just five years earlier – but they were recording and releasing like never before – and in every greater quantities. More and more great music.

But what we think of now as the core power tools for promotion and dissemination online simply did not yet exist.

This five year period between – for the sake of argument – Napster, and Chris Anderson’s identification of the phenomenon he called The Long Tail (in a Wired editorial in October 2004) represents a significant and important gap: a chasm between two entirely different music industry ecologies.

The tools for composition and production had leapt ahead. The tools for authorised and legitimate promotion, distribution and consumption were yet to be established.

And as a result, there is a five year period of popular music culture that represents an incredibly rich seam of fantastic independent music, much of which never had the opportunity to find its audience.

It’s an incredible gulf. A deep trench between the old music business and the new music business. A Grand Canyon of digital music.

Read the whole article and then tell me what you think.