Ziggy, I acknowldge in what I said that there IS a place for middle men who are adding value, this happens in most business models. However the music industry has been savaging itself and it's customers by thrashing around and making most of it's customers really angry with it. On top of that if you've worked in the music business then you will have to acknowledge that there were (and probably still are) a lot of people who made an awful lot of money out of doing very little. There are also those who willfully damaged both artists and the public if they felt they could make more money doing it.
They could have cut CD prices many years ago, they didn't.
They could have invested in legal download sites many years ago, they didn't.
They could have given the artists a reasnoble cut of the proceeds from the start, they didn't.
They could have given artists fair contracts where the artist still retained some control over their work, they didn't.
There are numerous other examples of how the industry has shot itself in the foot and really engineered the situation where the public really couldn't care less if the music industry suffers and dies. In fact many people feel they deserve everything they get.
If they had done just a few of the things suggseted above the illegal file sharing scene would never have got started. Why download some dodgy, poor quality, might be a virus, MP3 from some dodgy guy in the Ukraine when I can buy the track I want for 50p and it's high quality, safe, allows me to try out other tracks from the band, has full metadata, no DRM etc. They could still do this now...but they don't, hence the music industry is it's own executioner!
Darkheart
They could have cut CD prices many years ago, they didn't.
They could have invested in legal download sites many years ago, they didn't.
They could have given the artists a reasnoble cut of the proceeds from the start, they didn't.
They could have given artists fair contracts where the artist still retained some control over their work, they didn't.
There are numerous other examples of how the industry has shot itself in the foot and really engineered the situation where the public really couldn't care less if the music industry suffers and dies. In fact many people feel they deserve everything they get.
If they had done just a few of the things suggseted above the illegal file sharing scene would never have got started. Why download some dodgy, poor quality, might be a virus, MP3 from some dodgy guy in the Ukraine when I can buy the track I want for 50p and it's high quality, safe, allows me to try out other tracks from the band, has full metadata, no DRM etc. They could still do this now...but they don't, hence the music industry is it's own executioner!
Darkheart