The Music Industry Is Like Coal In The ’70’s

"This puts music in the same place as coal in the 1970s" – HITS

"Sixteen tons and what do ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt."  – Tennesse Ernie Ford

From a HITS guest editorial by Adam Singer, "The price of recorded music is falling, and the hope is that increased digital consumption will compensate for this…Power is shifting from aggregators to navigators. In other words, those that collected creative works and stood between the creator and the audience—studios, broadcasters and record companies—are losing their primacy to those that help you find the content."

"…Their problem is not the oft-quoted piracy, the length of copyright term or falling CD sales. The problem is whether the intermediaries between artist and audience can change their cost base to fit this new world. This puts music in the same place as coal in the 1970s, steel in the 1980s and TV in the 1990s."