Now they have to pay

In my opinion, the American music industry has contributed three things that caused its own decline:

1. Valuing money over art: Since the inception of rock and roll in the sixties, big money struggled to squeeze every dollar out of popular music. They packaged it, compartmentalized it, and made rock and roll their own invention. America has allowed big money to filter what we listen to and how we listen to it. The worst thing they did is change our values to fit their own “money over art.”
2. Destroying musicianship and love of art for its own sake: Through simplification of packaging, presentation, and promoting bad music (because they don’t understand good music); big money has dealt a prodigious blow to the process of making music. There is more than one way to make music and distribute it. Supporting and over-saturating the market with music like hair-metal in the 80′s and gangsta-rap in the 90′s forced the influences of these types of bad music upon the public. A generation has grown up thinking that these are the best things the industry has to offer. I personally know only one person under the age of 25 that has a true appreciation for musicianship and good music–who can appreciate the dedication and work it takes to make good tunes.
3. Failure to evolve to new technologies: Good music, raw music, controversial music, socially-responsible music thrives on distribution. “Hey, did you hear this song?–here’s a copy.” Good music relies on “artificial selection” to determine who lives and who dies (musically-speaking). Big money has attempted to control the success of certain artists and ensure the success of the artists into which they have invested their money most heavily. Case in point, Britney Spears. The world would have been a better place without ever hearing of Spears, but an incredible amount of money has been invested to ensure her success–only the biggest shows, only the biggest venues. The coolest thing about this is people

DRM (digital rights management) effectively takes the ownership of music copies out of the public’s hands, for one never truly owns the music you paid for. The media in which music is distributed has evolved and big money has tried every time to control its distribution to ensure the success of what THEY think we should listen to–vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, mp3′s. Everytime they try to control it, they lose. I, for one, am glad.