Here are some things I miss about the old music industry. How about you?
[This was my weekly column for GlobalNews.ca. – AC]
Today’s music industry has almost no resemblance to the olden days. Streaming, social media, audience consumption habits, music discovery and live performances have been irrevocably changed.
In retrospect, the hinge point was the release of the original Napster into the wild on June 1, 1999. The digital age of music, which had already begun, albeit slowly, would quickly explode into a wildfire that an unprepared — and frankly, willfully ignorant — music industry couldn’t contain. It took about 15 years for them to adapt to doing business in a vastly different way.
There’s a lot about today’s music industry to love, the primary one being instant access to some 200 million songs via the streaming music services for free (if you use Spotify) and something very close to it for everyone else. No more travelling through time and space to pick up that new album by your favourite artist. Streaming is, by 20th-century standards, indistinguishable from magic and witchcraft.
We’re never going back to the old ways, nor should we. But there are things I miss about the olden days. Here’s my personal list.
