Apple and the Music Industry, Two Flavors of Intransigence
Apple Computer’s thread to survival is no longer a computer, but the iPod and its companion loading mechanism, the iTunes service. The ‘Music Industry,’ loosely defined as the four major record companies seems bent on severing whatever threads to survival it has left, loosing itself to a final free-fall.
Each component in this modern Shakespearean drama has in common its failure to learn from past experience. Greed, or an inability to see where the music business is headed is the Industry cause and hubris is a specialty of Steve Jobs at Apple.
Music executives are so muddled by wealth, they don’t see the wall in front of their speeding egos. The old political adage of it’s the economy, stupid is turned on its ear within the music biz and screams to anyone who listens that it’s the Internet, stupid.
The bean-counters and expense-accounters have so thoroughly picked the pockets of their artists and consumers over the last four decades that they’ve become accustomed to theft and deceptio…